Sean "Diddy" Combs will be given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame Friday. Combs said he will be moving from New York to L.A. to pursue his acting career after his success of "A Raisin in the Sun." Diddy will celebrate with a lavish party Friday night at billionaire Ron Burkle's estate in Beverly Hills. Diddy talked about what's he's planning for the party.
"I'm having a party of course, I don't think that's a big surprise. But probably the way I'm doing it is probably a surprise. I'm evolving and maturing. I'm going from the 600 people party, people swinging on the chandeliers, dancing on the bars, breaking the Champagne glasses. I'm not saying I didn't enjoy that, but I've been there and done that. So this is more like an intimate 250 person party that are just very very close friends and family and people that I know throughout the industry. And it's also like my coming-out party here in Hollywood. I don't have nothing to hide about that. If I'm going to come someplace, I'm going to make some noise, and you're going to know I'm here. And I think it's all positive. It's nothing but positive."
Via wjtv.com
The Los Angeles Times has retracted a story which claimed rap mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs was involved in a 1994 shooting of rap star Tupac Shakur.
Last week the newspaper issued an apology after an investigation revealed the report had relied upon faked documents, purportedly from the FBI.
In the retraction the newspaper said it wished to "correct that misimpression" Combs had been involved.
When the story was published Combs immediately called it a "a lie".
He said the report was "beyond ridiculous" and "completely false".
The Los Angeles Times, which published the original story on its website, initially said its claims were based on FBI records, witness accounts and other unnamed sources.
An investigation was launched following claims published on The Smoking Gun website, which claimed the documents used were fabricated by a prison inmate with a history of exaggerating his place on the rap music scene.
Shakur died in 1996, in a separate shooting incident in Las Vegas.
Via bbc.co.uk
Papers purporting to be FBI reports linking associates of music mogul Sean "Diddy" Combs to a 1994 attack on rapper Tupac Shakur appear to be fakes, the agency said Friday. The documents had been cited in recent Los Angeles Times and Associated Press stories.
James Sabatino, a convicted con man who is serving a federal prison sentence for fraud, filed the documents last fall in Miami federal court as part of a $19 million lawsuit against Combs, claiming Combs never paid him for arranging a recording and video session by the late Notorious B.I.G.
The documents purported to be an FBI agent's reports on interviews conducted in 2002 of confidential informants linking Sabatino and associates of Combs to the 1994 shooting of Shakur in New York City. The shooting triggered a feud between East and West Coast rappers that later led to the killings of Shakur and Notorious B.I.G. None of the shootings have been solved.
"We have no record of these documents in our system," Agent Stephen Kodak said. "They don't appear to be legitimate." He said no decision has been made on whether to investigate the documents and their origin.
The Times used the documents as a basis for a story earlier this month linking Combs' associates to the first attack on Shakur. The newspaper apologized Wednesday for the story. The AP quoted from the documents when they were filed. It issued a corrective Friday.
The Web site The Smoking Gun first reported this week that the documents appeared to be fakes. The reports were written on a typewriter, not a computer, and contained misspellings identical to ones Sabatino made in other documents, its report pointed out.
Sabatino, 31, has a long history of falsely claiming to be a major player in the rap industry and perpetrating other frauds. He is currently serving an 11-year sentence for identity theft and fraud at a federal prison in Pennsylvania. His father once said in a letter to a judge that his son "is a disturbed young man who needed attention like a drug."
Howard L. Weitzman, Combs' attorney, said his client and Sabatino never had a business relationship.
"It should be clear that Mr. Sabatino has a vivid imagination, to say the least, and his credibility quotient is zero," Weitzman said in an e-mail.
Sabatino's lawsuit against Combs remains pending. No trial date has been set. Calls to the attorney he claims is representing him have not been returned.
Via associatedpress
The Los Angeles Times apologized for using documents that were apparently fabricated in a story implicating associates of Sean "Diddy" Combs in a 1994 assault on rapper Tupac Shakur.
"The bottom line is that the documents we relied on should not have been used," Editor Russ Stanton said in a story posted Wednesday night on the newspaper's Web site. "We apologize both to our readers and to those referenced in the documents ... and in the story."
Pulitzer-prize winning reporter Chuck Philips, who wrote the story, and his supervisor, Deputy Managing Editor Marc Duvoisin, also apologized.
The apologies followed an investigation launched by Stanton after The Smoking Gun Web site reported earlier in the day that the paper was conned by a prisoner who doctored the documents.
Combs denied that he had any prior knowledge of or involvement in the robbery and shooting of Shakur at a New York recording studio. He and other subjects of the story claimed they had been defamed by the newspaper.
The Smoking Gun said the documents seemed phony because they appeared to be written on a typewriter instead of a computer and included blacked-out sections not typically found in such documents, among other problems.
The Web site claimed the documents were fabricated by a prison inmate with a history of exaggerating his place in the rap music world.
The Times said its March 17 story was based on FBI records, interviews with people at the scene of the 1994 shooting, and statements to the FBI by an informant.
None of the sources was named.
Philips said Wednesday that a former FBI agent examined the documents in question for him and said they appeared to be legitimate.
But Philips said he wished he had done more to investigate their authenticity.
"I now believe the truth here is I got duped," he said.
Marc Lichtman, an attorney representing rap manager James Rosemond, one of two men the story linked to the Shakur attack, had earlier demanded an apology.
"I would suggest to Mr. Philips and his editors that they immediately print an apology and take out their checkbooks — or brace themselves for an epic lawsuit," Lichtman said Wednesday.
The shooting triggered a feud between East and West Coast rappers that led to the killings of Shakur and Notorious B.I.G.
The story said associates hoping to curry favor with Combs — who was overseeing B.I.G.'s white-hot career at the time — lured Shakur to the studio because of his disrespect toward them.
The story and related features on latimes.com attracted nearly 1 million hits — more viewers than any other story on latimes.com this year, the newspaper said.
Via associatedpress
Trouble-prone rapper Sean (Diddy) Combs dodged criminal charges for an alleged bathroom beatdown last month because the victim would not cooperate with prosecutors, officials said Tuesday.
Combs was initially accused of punching 31-year-old Steven Acevedo twice in the mouth last month in SoHo's swanky Kiosk club after trading insults over Acevedo's ex-girlfriend, who is dating the rapper.
During the alleged assault, Acevedo told cops, a member of Combs' entourage boasted, "We won't shoot you. You can even hold our guns," sources said.
No weapon was displayed, and no witnesses saw a gun, sources said.
Acevedo filed a police report, but yesterday Combs' lawyer said in a written statement prosecutors would not pursue the case.
Lawyer Benjamin Brafman commended police and prosecutors for a "thorough and very fair investigation ... and not allowing this private disagreement between two acquaintances to turn into a criminal charge."
Acevedo's lawyer, Mark Heller, confirmed his client was instrumental in halting the criminal proceedings.
"Steven Acevedo was definitely violated without legal provocation in the presence of witnesses," Heller said. "Had he chosen to vigorously pursue his rights, he surely would have prevailed in a court of law."
Officials said Acevedo would not cooperate with law enforcement and had given various versions of the event.
"For those reasons, we cannot prove any charges beyond a reasonable doubt," said Barbara Thompson, a spokeswoman for the Manhattan district attorney's office.
Via nydailynews
The king of a thousand nicknames just got one more: defendant.
A former Bad Boy associate—and current inmate—has filed suit from his Florida cell against Diddy and his business empire, to the tune of $19 million. The plaintiff alleges that's how much he's owed in royalties from a 1994 recording session with the late Notorious B.I.G.
James Sabatino, a former consultant for Diddy's Bad Boy Entertainment Inc., is seeking both actual and punitive damages.
Sabatino claims he is due the overdue payment of nearly 13 years after footing the bill for a Miami studio session. He says he paid for everything from flying Biggie into the city to renting the studio to recording 17 minutes' worth of vocals on audio and 90 minutes of the session on video.
According to Sabatino's lawsuit, it was understood that any material that came out of the session would be his, as he paid for the endeavor, but that there was never any formal contract signed between him and Diddy.
Fast-forward three years to 1997, when Notorious B.I.G., whose real name was Christopher Wallace, was gunned down in a still unsolved case and Diddy allegedly agreed to purchase both the audio and video from the session for a cool $200,000. Per Sabatino, Combs made a $25,000 down payment and promised to make good on the rest of the sum within 60 days.
But over the course of the next 60 days, Sabatino was declared a "person of interest" in Biggie's homicide investigation—he was due to meet the rapper on the night of his death but failed to show up.
Per the lawsuit, Combs then refused to pony up the outstanding balance for the music and video footage, claiming it would look less than savory for the rapper to cut a six-figure check to a man being investigated in his buddy and labelmate's death so soon after the incident.
In his lawsuit, Sabatino claims he waited so long to take legal action against the Grammy winner because he worried Combs would implicate him in the slaying, despite knowing he had nothing to do with it.
Sabatino goes on to claim that while he was waiting to be cleared in connection with the slaying, he was busted on separate charges.
According to Sabatino, he has been routinely promised the money was on its way.
Combs has yet to comment on the lawsuit.
He has, however, commented on a far more pleasant, though equally scandalous, relationship.
The rapper has finally acknowledged his disputed paternity of a 15-month-old daughter, telling the New York Post Monday he is "committed to being a good father" to Chance, the daughter born from an affair he had with Atlanta resident Sarah Chapman while still in the throes of his longtime relationship with former girlfriend Kim Porter.
"At first, I wasn't sure if this was my child," he told the paper. "Now that it has become clear she is, I will take care of her for the rest of her life."
The revelation comes after the artist submitted to a DNA test. The girl is Diddy's sixth child.
Meanwhile, open casting calls have already begun across the country to find a suitable actor to portray the late Biggie Smalls in an upcoming Fox Searchlight biopic. On Saturday, nearly 100 people showed up at the New York auditions, while video submissions for the role are currently being accepted online at biggiecasting.com.
Via eonline
