Prince Charles Alexander, a former producer at Diddy’s House, describes a decade working for the music titan.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-name” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”Black Han Sans|||on|||||” text_text_color=”#000000″ header_4_font=”|||on|||||” header_4_text_align=”center” text_orientation=”center” custom_margin=”||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”]
Words by Nikki Peach<\/strong><\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/05\/GettyImages-1641348632.jpg” alt=”Diddy” title_text=”Invest Fest 2023″ force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”] Ever since Sean \u2018Diddy\u2019 Combs was arrested on charges of sex trafficking, racketeering and transportation to engage in prostitution, the reaction from those once associated with him can largely be divided into three camps: shock, silence or satisfaction. Prince Charles Alexander, a music producer who worked at Combs\u2019 record label, Bad Boy Records, for almost a decade falls into the first camp.<\/p>\n From the beginning, Alexander knew he was working for someone formidable \u2013 determined if not destined to reach heights never before seen in the New York City music scene. He joined the creative arm of Bad Boy Records, Diddy\u2019s House, from its inception in 1993 and worked there until the early noughties. During this period, he witnessed great changes in Combs, from his ambition to his lifestyle, but claims not to have known what was allegedly going on behind closed doors.<\/p>\n Combs (also known as Diddy, Puffy and Love) was arrested in September following a federal sex trafficking investigation and his high-profile trial began earlier this month. He has pleaded not guilty to all charges and has also denied a slew of civil allegations accusing him of sexual assault, abuse and drugging over 20-year period.<\/p>\n \u2018I was witness to enough radical change over a decade to know that, if there was something going on, it was probably related to some of the changes that I saw,\u2019 Alexander, who currently works as a music professor at Berklee College of Music, tells me over Zoom. That change came in many forms. Money: by 1997, the label had its first $100 million (\u00a375m) year. Power: Combs was known for creating a hierarchy around him that never saw him dip from top position. Ambition: He expanded his influence from music production to launch Combs Global (formerly Combs Enterprises), a diverse portfolio of business and investments including music, fashion, fragrance, beverage, marketing, film, TV and media properties.<\/p>\n \u2018In the beginning, most of us thought that music was all Puffy was about. As he developed, we realised, or at least I realised, that this was only one of the things in his head and he had bigger aspirations,\u2019 posits Alexander. \u2018Music was a stepping stone for an African American to move through established hierarchy to get to another position and it was brilliant \u2013 brilliantly executed, brilliantly thought of, brilliantly played out.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018The creatives involved might not have even known they were part of it,\u2019 he continued. \u2018If you\u2019re an artist, you think \u201cPuffy just signed me, Bad Boy just signed me, my world is going to become huge\u201d, meanwhile you are one of the artists making Puffy become a bigger brand. I think it was primarily in the head of Puffy because he knew that everyone\u2019s success was going to feed his success.\u2019<\/p>\n Those artists included The Notorious B.I.G., Faith Evans, French Montana, Machine Gun Kelly, Janelle Monae and Cassie, who was in an on-off relationship with Combs from 2007 to 2018. In late 2023, Cassie, whose real name is Cassandra Ventura, filed a lawsuit against Combs alleging that he subjected her to a pattern of control and abuse over a decade, which he vehemently denied. Then in May 2024 CCTV footage from 2016 was leaked online, which showed Combs violently kicking and beating Ventura outside their hotel room. He issued an apology on social media the following day and the case was settled outside of court, reportedly for an eight-figure sum. Ventura is due to testify in court during his trial.<\/p>\n While Bad Boy Records was, until recently, an undoubtable star machine, Alexander believes the real beneficiary was Combs himself. This was a man hellbent on achieving astronomical success and seemingly did whatever it took to do so. \u2018One day, Puffy came into the studio and said, \u201cI\u2019m going to become an artist\u201d and I already knew him as a wunderkind behind the scenes as a marketing person, promotion kind of business type, so when he came in and said \u201cI\u2019m going to be an artist\u201d I was like okay, that\u2019ll never happen, it\u2019s just a whim. From the moment he said it to me, it took about two years, and it actually came to fruition,\u2019 Alexander recalls. \u2018And he was a good artist.\u2019<\/p>\n However, Combs\u2019 route to becoming a global artist is revealing \u2013 at least in terms of his cunning. \u2018He had great writers perform on the mic and then he went in and learned the parts and replaced their part with his,\u2019 the former Bad Boy producer explains. \u2018He\u2019s like a painter who had all these paintings with his name on and sold them for a lot of money, but he never painted them. Puffy was that kind of entrepreneur.\u2019 Isn’t that deceit? \u2018I did not perceive it as deceit,\u2019 Alexander responds. \u2018I perceived it as a very clear understanding of how business worked, how the creative process worked, the end product service, the listener, the audience.\u2019<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_text module_class=”custom-quote” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” header_2_font=”Libre Bodoni|||on|||||” header_2_text_align=”center” header_2_text_color=”#333333″ header_2_font_size=”40px” header_2_line_height=”1.2em” global_colors_info=”{}”] He’s right. By 2022, Combs was worth an estimated $1 billion (\u00a3757m), however according to Forbes his net worth has reportedly dropped to $400 million (\u00a3528). In running such a tight ship, however, Combs was quick to discard those who no longer served the brand. \u2018It took a while, I\u2019d say within five or six years, for the first crew of people that started to leave or get fired. When they first entered, the people he was listening to had high value for him,\u2019 Alexander explains. \u2018The more successful he got, those people were no longer around him, and then 10 years later the remnants of the people that knew him when he was just entering were almost altogether gone.\u2019 He had a knack for ensuring the ones who remained \u2018were catering to his every whim\u2019, as Alexander put it, \u2018it must be intoxicating\u2019.<\/p>\n Alexander was not fired, but he decided to step back from the business after witnessing a flurry of confrontations and a \u2018lack of graciousness\u2019 on Combs\u2019 part. \u2018He was having confrontations with so many people. Puffy wanted to win \u2013 even in a conversation. He didn\u2019t know how to mix records when I was first with him. As a producer, I\u2019m teaching him. And then when the student wants to turn their back on the teacher it can be received if it\u2019s gracious, but when he wasn\u2019t gracious with that one, it\u2019s only a matter of time before he\u2019s not gracious with me, even though I\u2019ve been around for a decade.\u2019<\/p>\n At this point, I referenced some of the video footage circulating in the many documentaries about Combs\u2019 life, career and trial that show him throwing his weight around in the studio and shouting \u2018I get what I want\u2019. \u2018Everything you saw is basically what I saw,\u2019 the professor adds. \u2018I remember one time he came in and he took the Billboard charts, and he said, \u201cThis right here, this is my shit.\u201d\u2019<\/p>\n Alexander then recalled another interaction where he had spent the best part of six hours mixing a song in the studio. \u2018Puffy comes in with a young lady, a famous young lady, and he wants to impress her, so he goes to the console and picks one of the percussion instruments and turns it all the way up and says, \u201cNow it sounds better.\u201d I had been working on this thing for hours and I look at him and basically say something like \u201cget out of here\u201d, something crazy like that.<\/p>\n \u2018I could see he was posturing for the young lady and it felt childlike, almost like a joke, but there was a moment of crossing where he was like \u201cno, I\u2019m serious, this is how I want it to be\u201d. Now I\u2019m an expert on music. I sat there for hours mixing this record and you come and turn something up out of context and you\u2019re telling me that\u2019s how the record should be?\u2019.<\/p>\n Eventually, as an independent contractor, Alexander began to turn down work opportunities at Diddy\u2019s House and found it elsewhere instead. \u2018These small things, which are small aggressions, at a certain point you\u2019re like if he\u2019s going to try you at level two, he\u2019s going to try you at level three, and if he\u2019s going to try you at level three, he\u2019s going to try you at level four.\u2019<\/p>\n While Alexander would never have described them as friends, per se, he did expect a certain level of respect, especially as someone 12 years his senior who was there from the beginning. He has not been in touch with Combs for more than 15 years and claims to have known very little about his trial. \u2018Is it possible that I was oblivious, and it was happening around me?\u2019 he asks. \u2018It\u2019s possible because I was really focused on the creative product. If it happened in the rooms, in the studio, I probably would have been aware of it, because everybody gossips. There was gossip, but it wasn\u2019t usually of a sexual nature, it was probably more on the violent nature like somebody had a fight or somebody pulled a gun on somebody.\u2019<\/p>\n \u2018I never saw anything like that in my sessions,\u2019 he maintains. \u2018I was the uncle, and people were kind of on their better behaviour around me.\u2019 Alexander is keen to point out is that what he knew of Combs behaviour was not unusual for the time. Hip-hop culture was known for its hedonism, bravado and misogyny. This was not necessarily the case in R&B or punk, as he points out, but it was happening in hip-hop, and Combs was a figurehead of the genre.<\/p>\n \u2018I\u2019ve been around dozens of artists who have come from nothing to incredible heights. Very few of them stay the same. Many of them move into the money in ways that take on a certain amount of hedonism. Some of them never outgrow it. Some of them don\u2019t survive it, they expire before they come to terms with it. Some of them come to terms with it and come back to Earth and do amazing things,\u2019 he explains. \u2018I did not know that Puffy had moved into such an expression of hedonism as what I\u2019m learning.\u2019<\/p>\n As to whether there is truth to the mounting allegations. \u2018Who knows? This is a very complex rags to riches story. It\u2019s for the judges and the jury and the psychologists to sort through.\u2019<\/p>\n Alexander hopes that, irrespective of the verdict of Combs\u2019 trial, the legacy of that period of music is not tarnished. \u2018Can we separate the artist from the art? In this case, it\u2019s actually easy because the artist wasn\u2019t there hands on creating the art. I\u2019m not say he wasn\u2019t involved, but there were songwriters, musicians, guitar players, drummers, beat makers, turntable and audio engineers and studio managers \u2013 lots of people who contributed to an amazing run in New York City.\u2019<\/p>\n Combs trial is expected to last for eight weeks.<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_divider color=”#111111″ divider_position=”center” divider_weight=”2px” module_class=”custom-divider” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” custom_margin=”0px||0px||false|false” custom_padding=”0px||0px||false|false” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_divider][et_pb_text module_class=”credit-texts” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” text_font=”|||on|||||” text_orientation=”center” global_colors_info=”{}”] Photo:\u00a0<\/b>Prince Charles Alexander via LinkedIn<\/p>[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section][et_pb_section fb_built=”1″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_row _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][et_pb_column type=”4_4″ _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" ‘If he\u2019s going to try you at level two, he\u2019s going to try you at level three, [then] level four.’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":9481,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"guestgrazia","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9466"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9484,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9466\/revisions\/9484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flatplanplus.io\/grazia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}‘I was witness to enough radical change over a decade’ \u2013 Prince Charles Alexander<\/h2>[\/et_pb_text][et_pb_image src=”https:\/\/flatplan-plus-content.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/6\/2025\/05\/3b4f66f7-cd94-4c2a-a9c1-ba1ebd05d3af-1.jpg” alt=”Diddy” title_text=”3b4f66f7-cd94-4c2a-a9c1-ba1ebd05d3af” force_fullwidth=”on” _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” hover_enabled=”0″ global_colors_info=”{}” sticky_enabled=”0″][\/et_pb_image][et_pb_text _builder_version=”4.20.4″ _module_preset=”default” global_colors_info=”{}”]