Sean “Diddy” Combs threatened that he’d see Vibe magazine’s editor in chief Danyel Smith “dead in the trunk of a car” after she refused to let the music mogul see an advance cover of the magazine, the journalist claims in a personal essay for New York Times Magazine .
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Combs was slated to be on the cover for the magazine’s December 1997/January 1998 issue, pictured glowering at the camera over tinted shades with white angel wings fanning out behind him, accompanied by the tagline “The Good, the Bad, and the Puffy.”
A few days before the issue went to press, Combs allegedly insisted on seeing the cover image, with the notion that if he didn’t like it, he would force the magazine to change the cover. Smith — who was at the helm of the music magazine from 1997 to 1999 — said she denied his request, explaining it was against the magazine’s policy to show work ahead of publication.
Flanked with his posse, Combs allegedly turned up to Vibe’s office and demanded to meet with Smith, who clutched the issue’s pages as she was whisked out of the office by her colleagues in order to avoid Combs. The next day, Combs allegedly called Smith and threatened her, taunting that he knew where she was. Smith said she demanded for Combs to retract his menacing threat, which he replied with a laugh and a “fuck you.” Smith wrote that she was so rattled that she contacted her attorney, prompting Combs to fax over an apology a few hours later.
Days later, Smith said the magazine’s servers were stolen from the office, with the large and heavy databases storing all the pages for the magazine’s upcoming issue vanishing. The suspicion was immediately placed on Combs and his Bad Boy crew, Smith wrote. Luckily, a staffer had saved a version of the issue on a personal disk and they were able to print the cover on time. (Combs did not respond to NYT Magazine’ s request for comment on the allegations.)
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Over the years, Smith said she interacted professionally with Combs while catching glimpses and hearing whispers about his alleged abusive behavior. She recalled early rumors that Combs had physically attacked a woman at Bad Boy’s offices. (Bad Boy’s co-founding partner and former president Kirk Burrowes and another ex-employee previously told Rolling Stone they once saw Combs attack a woman inside Bad Boy’s office in 1994, having to tear Combs off the woman after hearing screams and the sound of shattering glass.) Smith says she witnessed an unsettling moment between Combs and his late partner Kim Porter when Combs interrupted Porter while she had cocktails with friends, dumping out the contents of her purse on the table and demanding for her to go home.
Smith opened up about her experience in light of Combs’ current reckoning. The music mogul is the subject of a federal criminal investigation alongside civil lawsuits by six women and one man alleging a similar pattern of manipulation and abuse that stretched from the early 1990s to 2023.
She says she had largely blocked out the reality of the harrowing incident until two other people relayed the events back to her and the gravity of the situation came flooding back to her. “Considering this nauseating image of myself running and hiding from Combs, of people at work protecting me, made me confront other things I’d possibly repressed about that feral and fantastic time in my life,” Smith wrote. “To be a powerful woman in the music industry, and in the hip-hop media specifically, exacted a toll I’ve resisted reckoning with.”
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