Following the fallout of Sean “Diddy” Combs’ sex trafficking charges, John Legend’s manager has written an op-ed detailing an encounter she had at an event held by the disgraced mogul. She also condemned the toxicity of the music industry.
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Ty Stiklorius, who has worked as a music industry executive for 20 years, wrote an op-ed for the New York Times called “The Music Industry Is Toxic. After P. Diddy, We Can Clean It Up” on Thursday.
In it, she shared her experience at a yacht party thrown by Combs as a then-recent college graduate. At the event, Stiklorius said she was led to a bedroom where “a man who seemed to be an associate of the party’s host” locked the door behind him.
“Perhaps my nervous babbling — ‘My brother’s on this boat, and he’s probably looking for me!’ — convinced him to unlock the bedroom door and let me go,” Stiklorius recalled.
Although she was unsure if the man had any connection with Combs at the time, Stiklorius later understood that his behavior was a common occurrence.
“But I do now know, after 20 years as a music industry executive, that what happened that night was no aberration — it was an indicator of a pervasive culture in the music industry that actively fostered sexual misconduct and exploited the lives and bodies of those hoping to make it in the business,” she wrote.
Stiklorius also shared that “early experiences with predators, and those that enabled them, nearly led me to give up on the music business.” However, Legend—an old college friend of hers—helped prevent that after reaching out in 2005.
“It turns out that many artists, including John, want to be a part of a different model of business and culture,” Stiklorius wrote.
Stiklorius stated that “more representation in positions of power and “minimizing the use” of NDAs may help remedy the current climate of the industry as well as artists having more power.
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