Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Said It Was ‘Unfair’ That He Was Involved in a Rivalry With ‘Crazy’ Tupac Shakur

Sean “Diddy” Combs had a fraught relationship with Tupac Shakur. After the latter’s 1994 shooting, he publicly hinted that Diddy and the Notorious B.I.G. had advance knowledge of it. Both denied this, but it kicked off a rivalry between them. Diddy said he thought it was unfair that he was dragged into things. 

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs said he didn’t like being in a rivalry with Tupac

Not long after he survived the shooting in 1994, Tupac served eight months in prison on charges of sexual abuse. Diddy wrote to him during this time.

“I said, ‘I want to come see you. I don’t know if what the writer was saying in Vibe was true, that you really felt any of this. But whatever the situation is, I know me and Biggie want to just get it clear with you. We got nothing but love for you,’” Diddy told Rolling Stone. “He wrote back and said, ‘Well, Puff, everything’s cool. It ain’t no problem like that. I don’t really want us to have no meeting about it like that.’”

In 1995, however, Tupac released the vicious song “Hit ‘Em Up,” in which he directly called out Diddy and Biggie. Diddy said the song bewildered him.

“[W]hen it came to a situation when you in a war with somebody and you don’t want to fight the war? Then [Tupac] was the worst,” Diddy said. “I was like, ‘Why do I got to be in a war with this motherf***er right here? This motherf***er is crazy,’ There was too many followers to be in a war with him, and we had no time to be in a war. We came in this to make music.”

He didn’t think that the accusations Tupac leveled against him were fair.

“Then you find yourself in the middle of a battlefield, and you ain’t got no helmet, no gun, and you don’t even want to be there,” he said. “You think, ‘S***, I hope when the smoke clears I’m still ahead.’ It was unfair. We ain’t doing s***, and we getting accused of all this s***. We got motherf***ers making records about us, dissing us.”

Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs said his relationship with Tupac was initially friendly

Before the rivalry, Diddy said he modeled his label, Bad Boy, against Death Row Records, which produced Tupac’s music.

“When we were in our beginning stages, Death Row was established,” Diddy said. “Bad Boy was kind of modeled after Death Row because Death Row had became a movement. We wanted to model ourselves behind the record companies that were movements, like Motown, Def Jam, Death Row.”

He also said he liked Tupac, who he knew primarily as a friend of Biggie.

“It was all cool. No way in the world I could foresee any problems. And Tupac… he was mostly friends with Biggie,” he said. “That’s really how I got to know him. Biggie loved him to death, and Tupac helped Biggie out when we were just getting off the ground. He would let us come open his shows.”

The rapper’s accused killer said Diddy had something to do with his murder

In 1994, Tupac died in a drive-by shooting. His accused killer, Duane “Keefe D” Davis, has long claimed that Diddy had something to do with this. He alleged that Diddy ranted about wanting to see Tupac and Death Row CEO Suge Knight dead. According to Davis, Diddy later offered him $1 million to carry out the job.

Diddy has long denied playing any role in Tupac’s death.