All of this is to say that by the time audiences sat down to watch the long-anticipated Diddy documentary by fellow rapper and business tycoon Curtis Jackson (better known as 50 Cent), most already believed that Diddy was, at best, a serial domestic abuser and, at worst, a serial gang rapist.

Jackson’s documentary, Diddy: The Reckoning, posits the theory that what if the Bad Boy Records boss was not a mere repeat sex abuser, but also a serial killer?

And, dear reader, I can’t say that 50 Cent’s investigative journalism left me entirely unconvinced.

For what it’s worth, Diddy has maintained his innocence over basically everything except for the domestic abuse he directed toward Ventura. But, over the course of four, hourlong episodes, the Diddy documentary presents firsthand witnesses of the rapper’s accomplices and victims going back to his early childhood as well as private, personal footage that Diddy commissioned of himself in the days leading up to his 2024 arrest (The source who leaked the footage to 50 Cent’s team allegedly was stiffed by Diddy for payment).

But the most damning piece of evidence backing the documentary’s most outlandish claim about Diddy, namely that he ordered the 1996 murder of Tupac Shakur, is an uncut audio clip from 2008 of Duane “Keefe D” Davis, taken during a proffer interview with law enforcement. Davis, a former leader of the South Side Compton Crips gang who would be charged with Shakur’s murder 15 years later, alleges in the audio that Diddy offered him $1 million to kill Shakur, who was aligned with a rival gang, the Bloods, which in turn was aligned with Shakur’s label, Death Row Records. The basic rationale laid out by both Davis in past audio and multiple former Diddy allies in present recollections is that the perennially insecure Diddy felt threatened by the surging popularity of Death Row and Shakur. While bits and pieces of the Davis audio were released previously, it had never been laid out in its entirety before.

The documentary further implies that even as the East Coast-West Coast rap rivalry failed to cool down in the six months after Shakur’s murder, Diddy coerced his own talent, the Notorious B.I.G., to go out with him to Los Angeles despite Biggie expressing justified concern for their safety. Documentary witnesses confirm that Biggie was deliberating going independent from Bad Boy Records, threatening to eclipse Diddy’s personal star. If Biggie had lived, he could have rendered Diddy irrelevant. With Biggie dead, Diddy became his living legacy, capitalizing on Biggie’s memory with his Grammy-award-winning tribute “I’ll Be Missing You.”

Combined with the 1991 stampede at a Diddy-organised event that killed nine people and his arrest for a 1999 shooting at a Times Square nightclub, the Diddy documentary builds the circumstantial case that all of Diddy’s enemies being shot or assassinated was no coincidence, but rather the responsibility of Diddy himself. By definition, this makes Diddy not just a serial rapist but a serial killer.

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Again, Diddy has denied all of this. Even in his felony trial, he was ultimately acquitted of the more serious sex trafficking and RICO charges, only facing conviction for violation of the Mann Act, and the trial didn’t even try him on the allegations of rape, drugging, or domestic violence. Unlike the implicit case the documentary makes against Diddy regarding Shakur’s assassination, the documentary doesn’t feature any witnesses or evidence indicating that Diddy actually orchestrated the murder of Biggie, only that he was dismissive of Biggie’s concerns that they were in danger on the West Coast.

In the court of law, Diddy has emerged mostly triumphant. As the documentary illustrates, a star-struck jury delivered Diddy a verdict that means he is due to be released as a free man in fewer than three years. In the court of public opinion, Netflix makes the case that the truth may be more evil and stranger than fiction could possibly allow.