The Resurrection of Sean Combs

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He built his empire with the swagger he learned from the streets. And while the hustler turned hip-hop icon has had his professional triumphs (awards, parties, wealth beyond belief), he’s also had his share of personal catastrophe (murders, infidelities, heartbreak) as he’s kept up the near-impossible struggle to stay on top. After two decades in the game, Sean “Diddy” Combs—free of superstar posturing, bad-boy sunglasses and bombshell girlfriends—discusses Last Train to Paris, his most vulnerable and soulful album to date, and the wild ride that got him here alive.

Portraits of Sean “Diddy” Combs and Kate Moss cover the walls on the second floor of the Sean John offices in midtown Manhattan. The images show the 39-year-old hip-hop star wrapped in colonies of dead mink, rockstar sunglasses and the iconic all-white suits in which he trampled red carpets during the early ’90s. Bombast permeates the space, from the photographs to the frenetic assistants—one struggles to hide a torture device presumably meant to tone stomach muscles; another attacks the smell of panic in the room with a spray-can of Lysol—to the smattering of nearby coffee table books: In the Spirit of Cannes, Island Hotel Stories and In the Spirit of the Hamptons. With one minute left before our scheduled meeting on a sweltering afternoon in early August, a young woman walks over. “I’m sorry,” she says nervously, “but he isn’t here.”

After hailing a cab in the direction of the Bad Boy Entertainment recording studios, our new meeting point, I receive an ersatz justification from the mogul’s camp via text message: “Welcome to the world of Sean Combs!” The taxi drives past a Sean John billboard towering over the toothy out-of-towners and sullen bankers who crowd this part of Broadway. With his omnipotent, rap-stoic pout frozen in time, the reigning king of bling surveys his empire.

But Diddy didn’t show up to his studio today—Combs did, stripped of the expected artifice, swagger and hyperbole. Seated in front of the mixing board at “Daddy’s House” in white cargo shorts, blue high-top sneakers and a matching short-sleeve shirt, he yawns deeply and often. His diamond earrings and the “Life after Death” tattoo that peeks through his left shirtsleeve—a tribute to his friend and protégé Christopher “The Notorious B.I.G.” Wallace, infamously killed in a drive-by shooting in 1997—are the only traces of the heavily mythologized and often caricatured icon who once shouted across the world’s airwaves that he would forever be a bad boy.

But that was before his split two years ago from Kim Porter, his partner of 10 years and the mother of three of his five biological children. That was before the scrutiny, the drama, the name changes, the signature fragrance and the reality TV empire (at last count, he appears on three shows: VH1’s I Want to Work For Diddy, as well as Making His Band and StarMaker, both on MTV). The evolution of Sean John Combs from Puff Daddy to Puffy to P. Diddy to Diddy—from street-savvy opportunist to industry titan—has opened him up to criticism, specifically from cynics who question his credibility as a musician. “I have people confused,” he says, laughing. “They don’t know what the hell to think. ‘He has 20 different names, a clothing line, a record company and a vodka brand. He’s a rapper who went to the Hamptons and he’s crap.’ But it’s not that easy. You can’t just sum me up like that.”