Diddy's secret world revealed in videos and his voice notes

Warning: Explicit content

"Can y'all come straighten it up over here? It's not looking luxurious," Sean "Diddy" Combs says in a voice note to his personal assistants as R&B music mellows in the background.

Hours before, a so-called "freak-off" - a drug-fuelled orgy also known as a "Wild King Night" - had been in full swing. Now, staff were being called in to clean up.

"PD said he's going to need emergency clean up at hotel," his chief of staff texts after another of these events. "Bring him stain remover (for a chair and couch) and black trash bags. And baking soda too, he said."

We have been shown material which paints a picture of a "scary" and unpredictable boss, who would administer shocking "loyalty tests", and whose demands grew more and more extreme.

Staff have described how his sometimes-days-long "freak-offs" were held at locations around the world, with the rapper expecting staff to prepare a bag containing "baby oil, lubricant and red lights" - to create the red-tinted ambience Combs preferred - alongside class-A drugs wherever he travelled.

Inside his waterfront Miami mansion, a $48m (£36m) compound located on an exclusive man-made island, we have been told that Combs kept tight control of his inner circle.  

"I'm not about to be transparent with y'all," a groggy Combs warns staff one day in a rambling voice note posted in an employee WhatsApp group in 2020. "There's some dark places y'all [EXPLETIVE] don't want to go. Stay where you're at."

Staff say he was intense, demanding and volatile, with some attributing his unpredictability to a lifestyle of drug-fuelled parties. The turnover of staff was high and Combs had more than 20 different house managers join and leave in just two years across his properties, one former estates manager told us.

Ethan recalls one of Combs' loyalty tests - when the star took off one of his rings and threw it into the Atlantic Ocean. He then turned to Ethan and told him he had to go into the water to get it.

They were at a formal event and Ethan, like his boss, was wearing a smart suit. He says this didn't stop him jumping in right away to rescue it.

In another incident, Pines says Combs called him to his residence after midnight, just so he could fetch the TV remote from under the bed he was in with a female guest.

"See? He is loyal and now he can go back home," he recalls Combs telling her. Pines says he felt like an animal.

"Rounding up a shelf of baby oil and Astroglide at a store is very, very humiliating. I would always pretend like I was on the phone," Pines tells us.

In Combs' trial the prosecution presented evidence of supplies they said were procured for "freak-offs". A police raid on Combs' Los Angeles mansion found drugs and more than 1,000 bottles of baby oil.

From three months into his role, Pines began having concerns about the frequency of these requests. "It became daily, sometimes twice a day, every day, and every week."

Pines says there was a constant stream of young women who frequented Combs' homes - apparently for sex. Young men were also called to the parties, says Ethan.

Some of these young people would appear to be friends of the star's sons, Pines tells us, with some of the women later seen "hanging" with Combs.

Pines says he also had concerns that some of these guests - who looked like they were in their early 20s - were "too young" and "impressionable" for his then 50-year-old boss.

"I would see some women feel uncomfortable or at least look like they'd had a wild night," says Pines.

A woman with an IV drip would usually visit the next day, he says, to help guests recover after sometimes "partying" for 24 hours non-stop without food.

Pines recalls one young guest uttering to him in distress: "I've never done anything like that before."

He was instructed to drive her home from Combs' Miami residence: "She was kind of shaking and shivering, like she was coming down off the drugs."

During the party, Pines says Combs invited him to take a shot, before asking him to "prove his loyalty".

He handed Pines a condom and pushed him towards a female guest who was lying on a nearby couch.

"At that moment, I'm like, what is going on?" Pines says. "I froze. I was just shocked by what was happening. I felt cold… but I also felt so much pressure."

Pines says the woman consented and they had sex until Combs began "drifting off into another part of the suite".

"I didn't want any of that," he says. "Once I kind of saw him out of my peripheral, that he was gone, I pulled up my pants and just got out of there quickly.

"It was a power move. I felt like I was coerced. It was manipulation."

When they travelled internationally, staff say Combs' drugs came with him, concealed in a safe onboard his $60m (£45m) private jet.

"Even if it was for a day trip, if he was going on the yacht for four hours, take all that stuff with you because he may use it," Pines recalls being instructed.

He claims mushrooms, ketamine and ecstasy were kept in a small black Gucci bag alongside baby oil, lubricant and red lights.

Combs' lawyers admitted during trial that he had procured drugs, but said they were for personal use only.

In one nerve-wracking incident in Venice in summer 2021, Pines says Italian authorities questioned Combs' staff for an hour. He feared that if they had found the drugs hidden in the luggage, he would have "taken the fall" for his boss.

A former personal assistant, Brendan Paul, was arrested on charges of drug possession while with Combs at a Miami airport in March 2024, on the same day police raided the rapper's homes. The charges were later dropped after Paul completed a pre-trial diversion programme.

During Combs' trial, Paul, 26, testified that he had found cocaine after "sweeping" his boss's room and had forgotten it was in his bag while they prepared for a vacation in the Bahamas. He told the court that he did not tell law enforcement that they were Combs' drugs out of "loyalty".

By December 2021, Pines says he had had enough. 

"The money wasn't worth it... because of the experiences I was having with him. It was just too much to bear."

When asked why staff had not spoken out sooner, Pines does not hesitate. They were, he says, afraid of Combs.

"He is a very scary person. Whether you're his employee, you're a contractor, you're a girlfriend, guest, you know what he's capable of," he says.

Ethan says he used to believe that Combs had "people a couple of steps in front" who "caught everything". But after his former boss's arrest, his view shifted. Staff simply were not able to stop what was coming, he says. "Obviously being a celebrity, he could cut many corners," he reflects, but "he couldn't avoid the law".

Pines says he was approached by federal agents in the Department of Homeland Security as part of its criminal investigation last summer and was later legally summoned to give evidence ahead of Combs' trial. Other ex-assistants, who worked for Combs back in 2014 and as recently as 2024, testified in court during the trial.

"I have to nod to Cassie Ventura for being so courageous to stand up to him," Pines says.

Ventura's civil lawsuit, filed in November 2023, alleged Combs had trapped her in a cycle of violence and sexual abuse. The lawsuit was settled in a $20m (£15m) pay-out, one day after the filing. But dozens more followed in quick succession - there are now more than 60 civil cases against Combs, which remain to be resolved.

"She opened the door for people like me to come forward, and for other people who are going through similar things who feel silenced, who feel powerless going up against a giant."

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