‘Sean Combs: The Reckoning’ Sparks Widespread Conversation About Hip-Hop Culture

It’s taken Netflix by storm, soaring past thousands of offerings to reach the streaming platform’s top spot just days after its release. It’s renewed interest in the East Coast-West Coast rap feud, the still-unsolved 1997 murder of Biggie, and the evidence against the man accused of gunning down Tupac a year earlier.

And chances are, if you’ve seen five Black people hanging out together in the last week or so, at least three of them were probably talking about “Sean Combs: The Reckoning.” 

Since its release on Dec. 2, the Alex Stapleton-directed, 50 Cent-produced documentary tracing the remarkable rise and spectacular fall of the music mogul known as Diddy has hijacked conversations about and around Black culture.  

Open Secrets, Unvarnished Truths

“Thinking of all the Black Xennials coming to the horrible realization after the Puffy Doc that the entire culture of our childhoods was shaped by apex predators — Bill Cosby, R. Kelly, and Puff Daddy,” feminist scholar Dr. Brittney Cooper, a professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, wrote on Threads. “What a world.”

“Reminder,” @finalgirlboss wrote on Bluesky, ”that you do not need to watch a documentary to know that Sean Combs is a monster and prison is already too good for him.”

Author Mat Johnson, another Bluesky user, wrote, “Over the break, I will be drafting legislation to remove Sean Combs from the intro to Craig Mack’s ‘Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)’.”

Ouch. 

One might not anticipate a four-hour documentary on a well-known public figure who, for decades, has been the subject of scandalous open secrets, conspiracy theories, and at least two other documentaries would make much of a splash. That seems especially true given that Combs was just sentenced to four years in prison in October — after a high-profile criminal investigation over the summer and a weeks-long trial that aired enough dirty laundry to fill the Grand Canyon. 

The goal of the film is to let the audience kind of come in to ask questions like, ‘Were there decisions that were colored by certain things?’ and ‘Who got the benefit of the doubt?’ALEX STAPLETON, DIRECTOR, “SEAN COMBS: THE RECKONING”

Yet “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” hit Black America like a bombshell, with new, behind-the-scenes footage of Diddy yelling at his lawyers, plotting a post-trial strategy to rehab his image, and grousing that he needs a hot bath after interacting with commoners in Harlem. There’s disturbing testimony about Combs’ traumatic upbringing, unflinching discussions about sexual abuse he allegedly perpetrated, and strong insinuations he may have more than a little blood on his hands. 

Still, by laying bare the allegations, identifying the enablers, and examining the ecosystem that allowed Combs to indulge every whim, the film tapped directly into Black America’s zeitgeist, forcing a communal reckoning with the stories we’ve accepted and the ones we’ve been too afraid to tell.

The documentary also landed hard in no small part because of 50, a.k.a. Curtis Jackson, Diddy’s long-time hip-hop nemesis. A rapper who never met a grudge he couldn’t carry, Jackson’s own problematic behavior, including purported abuse of women, makes him an imperfect messenger, to say the least. But he stands by the documentary, arguing he’s simply exposing hip-hop’s dark side — and how a very powerful, highly flawed man thrived in it.

Diddy’s Rise and Fall 

“It’s not personal,” Jackson said in an interview with Robin Roberts of ABC News’ “Good Morning America.” 

Stapleton concurred. She told Roberts that the goal of the film is “to let the audience kind of come in to ask questions like, ‘Were there decisions that were colored by certain things?’ and ‘Who got the benefit of the doubt?’” 

Told in four hour-long episodes, the series chronicles how Combs amassed fortune and fame in the music industry, ruthlessly created an empire, and seemed to instigate the deadly East Coast-West Coast feud of the 1990s. It also traces how Combs bullied, abused, or exploited nearly everyone in his orbit: business partners and assistants, signed artists and proteges, romantic partners and objects of his desire. 

“Allegations in the documentary range from drugging and raping unconscious victims and showing videos of the attacks on big screens at his parties to orchestrating the murders of Tupac Shakur and Christopher ‘Biggie’ Wallace,” Brooke Obie, a pop culture journalist, wrote for the “Contraband Camp” Substack. “Endearing moments in history, like Combs throwing his ‘best friend’ Wallace a lavish funeral in Brooklyn, get revealed as lies since Combs allegedly charged the funeral costs to the Wallace estate to cover, then set up ‘freak-off’ celebrations every March 9 on Wallace’s death anniversary.”

Holes ‘Obvious and Glaring’

While the bad behavior of Bad Boy Entertainment’s founder is likely to reverberate in the community for a while, some pop culture consumers believe “Sean Combs: The Reckoning” misses a much bigger, more problematic target: how misogyny, sexism, and sexual abuse dominate hip-hop culture.

“People keep saying they want to hear from other people in Diddy’s life,” author and theologian Candice Marie Benbow wrote on Threads. “We don’t need any more stories to know he’s a horrible human being.”

Instead, she wrote, what’s needed is “a documentary that explores Hip Hop, rape culture, the myth of tearing down Black men and the disposability of Black girls and women. This doc was never going to be that because it would have implicated 50 [Cent], too. For as powerful as the doc is, the holes are obvious and glaring.”

Obie was more succinct.

“As a history of Diddy’s vile character, the docuseries is thorough,” she wrote. “As a ‘reckoning’ for the pile of victims, bodies, and carnage in his wake, it’s woefully incomplete.”

This story was originally published on Word In Black on December 11th, 2025