Just as “Surviving R. Kelly” laid bare the granular details of that subject’s alleged victims in a multi-part documentary, “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” has dominated Netflix since its Dec. 2 release for the same reason: It spends hours dissecting the megalomaniacal Sean “Diddy” Combs and his manifold transgressions – both alleged and not so much.
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And much like the Kells doc was the metaphorical nail in his metaphorical coffin, “The Reckoning” all but guarantees that Diddy’s troubles aren’t done even when he’s released from prison in 42 months. “The Reckoning’s” heinous claims against Diddy, however, obfuscate an uncomfortable truth: Many of the accusers in the doc speak publicly about what they witnessed years after they were positioned to do something about it – well past statutes of limitation that could’ve had Diddy behind bars long ago.
Let’s start with Bad Boy Records co-founder Kirk Burrowes, who’s garnered loads of sympathy on social media for being allegedly forced (by way of baseball bat) out of a company that was worth about $100 million during its late 90s, post-Biggie apex.
Burrowes’ most viral allegations had to do with Diddy’s alleged role in the shooting death of Tupac Shakur, but he admitted to keeping journals documenting all the vile shit he insists he witnessed Diddy do. That would mean Burrowes has been sitting on about a half-decade of alleged dirt from Diddy’s ascendancy – so why are we just hearing about it several U.S. presidents later? Seems like he could’ve stemmed Diddy’s tide before it got high – but it likely would’ve jacked his bag up at the time.
Producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones spent ample time with Diddy in Miami (and is apparently sitting on hours of raw video footage of him) as they created 2023’s “The Love Album: Off the Grid.”
“Unfortunately, if you wanna make it in this industry, you have to work for certain people like Puffy…he’s one of the gatekeepers,” Jones says in the doc, before detailing the abuse and assault he allegedly witnessed (and experienced).
Jones admitted to shutting up and going with the flow – until Diddy didn’t pay him for his services. Now, there’s a $30 million lawsuit and participation in a doc. I wonder if we would’ve heard from Jones if he got his dough…
Then there’s Kalenna Harper, Dawn Richard’s former bandmate from Diddy–Dirty Money. In the lawsuit Richard filed against Combs in 2024, she alleged that both she and Harper witnessed Diddy physically assault his then-girlfriend Cassie Ventura. However, Harper stood on business in defense of Diddy and said she didn’t see anything. Fine I guess…but Harper revealed that she did this shortly after she asked Diddy for a mere $5,000 loan to help her child custody battle — only for him to turn her down.
Only the four of them know who witnessed what, but Harper comes off in the doc like a lovelorn woman whose cornbread is a bit soft in the middle. I wonder if we would’ve seen Harper in this doc, at all, if Diddy helped her out with what’s the equivalent of sofa cushion coins to him.
“The Reckoning’s” most egregious offender is Capricorn Clark, Diddy’s former assistant who gained a lil’ shine when she took the stand in his trial earlier this year. She admitted to seeing flat-out abuse toward Cassie and claimed Diddy kidnapped and eventually fired her for keeping hush-hush about Cassie’s relationship with Kid Cudi. Clark admits to being positioned to take down Diddy’s whole shit almost 15 years ago…but she fixes her face to say, “I had more love for the culture than to embarrass him and take it all away from him like that.”
Disgusting.
The entertainment industry has been polluted with odious, solipsistic gatekeepers like Diddy since time immemorial. But their road to bad behavior have been paved by complicit souls who convinced themselves that it’s all “part of the business.” The assistants to Harvey Weinstein who knew what he was doing in those back rooms but kept quiet because they aspired to be Hollywood players. The folks who joined R. Kelly to pick up girls in the parking lot of Kenwood Academy High School in Chicago because they loved the A-list access. These big, bad men don’t get big and bad all alone.
Many of the subjects in “The Reckoning” had or still have civil suits filed against Diddy is hard to ignore — and it also begs curiosity regarding how much more Diddy dirt is being covered up by folks who got their money.
Keeping quiet in the name of securing bags is among the more insidious yet commonplace aspects of capitalism. But “The Reckoning” lays bare an existential query: Are folks who stay quiet while witnessing terrible people do terrible things complicit? And in this case of “The Reckoning”…should they be in a jail cell next to Diddy?
Straight From 
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