In February 2024, former Bad Boy music producer Rodney Lil Rod Jones filed a lawsuit against Sean Diddy Combs, alleging that he s*xually assaulted him and forced him into s*xual acts with pr*stitutes.
The civil complaint, filed in the Southern District of New York by attorney Tyrone T.A. Blackburn, included a trigger warning for graphic s*xual content. It accused Combs of repeated, unsolicited groping and sexual touching.
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Additionally, Lil Rod accused Motown Records, Universal Music Group (UMG), and several executives of being complicit due to their direct knowledge of and financial support for Diddy's illegal lifestyle. UMG CEO Lucian Grainge and Motown CEO Ethiopia Habtemariam, both defendants in the lawsuit, were the focus of the complaint.
Blackburn argued that Motown's business partnership with Diddy's Love Records label in 2022 had financially supported the "serious debauchery" that the record companies were aware of during that period. In court on October 16, 2024, he emphasized that the record labels' intentional disregard of the situation should not be overlooked.
At the same hearing, attorney Donald Zakarin from Pryor Cashman requested sanctions against Tyrone Blackburn. Lawyers for UMG and Motown argued that Blackburn should be sanctioned to prevent others from bringing "baseless" claims against the labels.
The lawyers contended that the situation warranted sanctions, accusing Blackburn of engaging in a pattern of behavior that included promoting himself on social media through sensational allegations. They also stated that Lucian Grainge's reputation had been unfairly damaged by accusations that Blackburn and his client either knew were false or disregarded whether they were true.
Lil Rod claimed to have witnessed Diddy involved in hours of drug use and s*xual activity
Lil Rod also claimed to have witnessed and recorded hundreds of hours of illegal drug use and s*xual activity involving Diddy and those around him. The accusations included drug distribution and transport, solicitation of pr*stitutes, serving e*stasy-laced alcohol, and the purchase and transport of firearms.
As per reports, the drugs named were e*stasy, c*caine, GHB, Percocet, ketamine, synthetic “pink c*caine,” and psychedelic mushrooms. In an interview with Rolling Stone on August 27, 2024, Lil Rod described his battle with Diddy as ‘rough’ saying,
“Because of this lawsuit, most people don’t want to come near working with me for whatever reasons, whether they’ve been in partnership with Puff or they want to just sit back and see what happens. He’s a gatekeeper in the music industry. In this industry, to be successful, you have to have worked with someone like him or Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Kanye or 50 Cent.”
At the October 14, 2024 hearing, Zakarin described Lil Rod's lawsuit as "entirely meritless" and accused Blackburn of pursuing the case in bad faith. He argued that Blackburn had incorrectly portrayed UMG and Motown as the "parent company" of Combs' Love Records, implicating them in RICO and s*x trafficking claims.
Zakarin clarified that Motown and Love Records did not have a partnership or joint venture, only a standard licensing agreement. He noted that Motown/UMG had paid Diddy a $1.3 million advance, which they did not recover because they terminated the deal before the release of Diddy's R&B album, The Love Album: Off The Grid, on Love Records.
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