Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Planned the ‘Biggest’ Funeral for the Notorious B.I.G., but Refused to Pay for It
Sean “Diddy” Combs signed the Notorious B.I.G. to Bad Boy Records, and was there on the night the rapper was killed. After Biggie’s death, Combs reportedly jumped into preparations for his funeral. According to Combs’ former business partner, though, he charged Biggie’s estate for the plans he made.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegedly wouldn’t put money towards the Notorious B.I.G.’s funeral
After Biggie’s murder in 1997, Combs’ business partner, Kirk Burrowes, said the mogul jumped into funeral preparations. Bad Boy co-founder Kirk Burrowes said that while Combs wanted a big funeral, he didn’t want to foot the bill for it.
“Sean said, ‘We’re gonna do the biggest funeral for Biggie that New York has ever seen,’” Burrowes said in Sean Combs: The Reckoning. “We start to put that together, he starts to see the price. He says, ‘We’re gonna do the biggest funeral, but Biggie’s gonna have to pay for this funeral.’”
Combs decided that Biggie’s estate should pay for the funeral. Burrowes believed Combs’ involvement in the funeral was all public posturing.
“He was gonna make the funeral be a recoupable charge to Biggie in death,” Burrowes explained. “Sean doing a big show looks good on him. But he’s not gonna tell the world that Biggie was gonna pay for it.”
The director of Sean Combs: The Reckoning, Alexandria Stapleton, said that she considers this one of the most shocking parts of the documentary.
A Bad Boy artist said Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs had the Notorious B.I.G. in an unfair contract
A former Bad Boy artist, Mark Curry, claimed that Combs also put Biggie and other artists in predatory contracts.
“Other than Puff, no one else has prospered off the label,” Curry wrote in his book Dancing With the Devil: How Puff Burned the Bad Boys of Hiphop (via Salon), adding, “I was in the same spot as Biggie when he signed with Bad Boy. After Biggie signed the contracts that Puff forced on him, for example, he walked away with only $25,000.”
Curry claimed that Combs tried to cover this up after Biggie’s death.
“To avoid people finding out just how broke Biggie was when he was killed, Puff announced that he was giving the fallen star’s family several million dollars.”
He spoke about the aftermath of the rapper’s death
Combs left Los Angeles the day after Biggie’s death. He said he struggled in the aftermath.
“So then I’m about to get on a plane. And as I’m seeing the plane pull up, that’s when I just break down,” he told Rolling Stone in 1997. “I’m about to leave L.A. without my man, you know what I’m saying? He’s getting left here — he’s at the morgue, just laying there. That s*** was just so f***ed up to me. I’m getting on a plane. My man is in a morgue, all f***ed up.”
He said he wished their places had been reversed.
“Oh, I was down,” he said. “I was so ready to die. It’s not like suicidal s***. It just be like wishing you was dead instead of him.”
