Biggest revelations from 50 Cent's Netflix documentary on Diddy

Vivian Kwarm, New York Daily News on Dec 2, 2025

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Netflix released its long-awaited 50 Cent-produced documentary “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” on Tuesday, featuring unseen footage, major revelations and exclusive insider interviews.

The four-part docuseries covers everything from the rap mogul’s troubled childhood to the tragedies that shaped his career.

Here’s a rundown of the doc’s most jaw-dropping revelations about Diddy’s rise and fall.

Combs’ chaotic childhood

The documentary explores the violence and chaos of Combs’ childhood in Mount Vernon, N.Y., including alleged beatings at the hands of his mother. After Diddy’s drug-dealer father was murdered when he was 3 years old, his mother, Janice, took on a strict disciplinarian role, according to childhood friend Tim Patterson.

“His beatings made me scared,” Patterson said. “I got beatings … but when he got his beatings, it wasn’t a joking thing.”

Patterson also revealed that Combs grew up in a home where wild parties were the norm.

“Janice knew how to throw a party, and the parties were packed,” Patterson said. “You got the ladies who looked like they were straight out of a ‘Jet’ magazine. Some brothers up there. If you want to call them pimps, you can. If you want to call them hustlers, you can. You got a member of the New York Knicks, or two. There was a stage in her living room, literally a stage. And that’s where we used to have to go and dance. And everybody’s calling you, ‘Baby.’ And everybody’s saying, ‘Do that dance.’ And all of this stuff he’s taking in.”

Diddy attempted a “propaganda” campaign before his arrest

Six days before Combs was arrested in September 2024, he attempted to form a plan to activate a pro-Diddy campaign on social media, according to the documentary. Footage exposes an intense conversation between the Bad Boy Records founder and his lawyer regarding the perception of him online.

Diddy hoped to repair his public image by bringing in a strategist, saying it should be “somebody that has dealt in the dirtiest of dirtiest, dirty business of media and propaganda.”

Jurors explain mixed verdict in trial

“I do feel it’s important that we let the public know from the jurors’ standpoint just kind of how we reached the verdict,” Juror 160 said in the documentary. “It’s not everything that the media has put it out to be.”

Two jurors from Combs’ trial, who convicted him on charges of transportation to engage in prostitution, said they felt his relationship with Cassie Ventura was definitely violent, but they didn’t think the evidence was strong enough to convict him of the more serious charges of sex trafficking and racketeering.

“You can’t beat that small girl like that, the way he did,” one juror said, in reference to the surveillance video of Combs brutally beating Ventura in a hotel hallway, but noted that “domestic violence wasn’t one of the charges” against Combs.

The second juror said he felt “confused” by the complicated nature of Combs and Ventura’s relationship, explaining that they’d see evidence of violence and then “the next minute, they’re going on dinners and trips.”

Allegations of involvement in Tupac and Biggie deaths

Interviews with former artists and staff at Bad Boy Records revealed behind-the-scenes stories about the murders of Tupac Shakur and Biggie Smalls, with several claiming Combs was heavily involved.

With interviews from Mark Curry, Roxanne Johnson and Bad Boy co-founder Kirk Burrowes, the documentary alleges that Combs helped escalate the East Coast-West Coast hip-hop rivalry in the 1990s.

According to Burrowes, Combs “ushered Biggie to his death” by pressuring the “Big Poppa” artist to go to Los Angeles to promote his album, even though Smalls didn’t want to go and knew it was dangerous.

Burrowes also alleged that he now believes Combs similarly “had a lot to do with the death of Tupac.”

The documentary claims that Diddy paid drug kingpin Duane ‘Keffe D’ Davis to have Shakur killed in 1996. Davis is currently awaiting trial in connection to Shakur’s death.