Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Allegedly Told an Editor She’d End Up ‘Dead’ Over a Magazine Cover
In 1997, Sean “Diddy” Combs posed for the cover of Vibe Magazine while wearing angel wings. Then-editor-in-chief Danyel Smith wanted him to wear the wings as a reference to the film Heaven Can Wait. Diddy agreed, but quickly became a major problem for Smith. She said that he demanded to see and approve the cover. When she refused, she alleged that he began to threaten her.
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs posed in angel wings for a magazine cover
In 1997, Diddy released his debut album, No Way Home. It was a major success, so Smith wanted him on the cover of Vibe Magazine.
“So I wanted Combs on the cover of Vibe’s December 1997/January 1998 double issue,” she wrote in an essay for New York Times Magazine. “And I wanted him to wear white feathered wings.”
When he arrived, he agreed to Smith’s vision, though she admitted he didn’t seem thrilled about it.
“That day, Combs was begrudgingly compliant,” she wrote. “We finally got him to shrug on the white feathered wings.”
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs allegedly threatened an editor over the magazine cover
Not long after the photoshoot, Diddy reached out demanding to approve the finished product. Smith refused.
“He cooperated up to a point, but eventually his controlling ways took hold,” she wrote. “A few days later, Combs wanted to see the Vibe covers before they went to press. It wasn’t our policy to show covers before publication, so after I told him no, we heard that he planned to come to our office and force us to show him what we’d chosen — and to make us choose something else if he didn’t like what he saw.”
Vibe employees put together a plan to keep Smith safe if Diddy arrived at the office. As it turned out, it was good that they had a plan. He showed up, demanding to speak to her, but she was able to slip out with proofs of the story and cover images.
Diddy managed to get a hold of Smith on the phone. She alleged that he made a threat against her.
“He was still on message: he wanted to see the covers,” Smith wrote. “I was still on message: It’s not what we do. It was then that Combs told me, as I’ve retold hundreds of times over the years, that he would see me ‘dead in the trunk of a car.’”
She contacted her lawyer immediately afterward and, within two hours, she said Diddy faxed her an apology.
The story vanished from Vibe offices
Despite Smith’s consistent refusal, she believed Diddy somehow managed to get ahold of the story and images. One day, the servers holding them vanished from the Vibe offices.
“Soon after those menacing encounters, I walked into work one morning to find my staff members tamping down panic,” she wrote. “A couple of servers, which back then were as big as end tables and twice as heavy, had been stolen, and the scuttlebutt was that the theft was an inside job. That someone on Vibe’s publishing side had let in movers from Bad Boy.”
In a stroke of luck, an art director had taken home a disc with the story and images saved. They were able to publish the story.
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