Earlier this summer season, experiences swirled that Diddy, by means of Revolt, award-winning filmmaker Tyler Perry and Leisure Studios founder Byron Allen had been all vying for majority stake in BET. In a brand new interview with Billboard (Sept. 13), Diddy revealed that his thoughts continues to be set on collaborating along with his two fellow businessmen in some capability.
Of Revolt, which is nearing its ten-year anniversary this 12 months, Diddy stated, “So far as our enterprise technique, we’re in acquisition mode to actually construct a Black-owned media conglomerate. That’s why we had been taking a look at BET and at a few different companies.” He continued, “BET is unquestionably the mecca, the originator of Black media, and nonetheless is…. We’re not going to have the ability to attain our highest stage of success within the media world, like a Rupert Murdoch, if we don’t unify. Like me, Tyler Perry and Byron Allen. Now we have a duty as a result of it’s like 15 of us getting cash, however 10 billion folks on this planet.”
Nonetheless, by the top of the summer season (Aug. 16), Paramount determined towards promoting their majority stake in BET.
Diddy’s discuss of unification comes alongside his understanding that variety within the music {industry} has “gotten worse” since #TheShowMustBePaused. “It’s all a bunch of bulls–t. Variety isn’t about inclusion; variety is about sharing energy. And nothing has modified. It’s gotten worse,” he stated. “Now we have some illustration … Shout out and all due respect to everyone that’s in energy. However [for most people], there’s nonetheless any person over them, a white man that they must get permission from to do one thing. And it’s all the time been the identical, it doesn’t matter what the {industry}.”
In 2020, Atlantic Data senior administrators of selling Brianna Agyemang and Jamila Thomas launched #TheShowMustBePaused along side an industry-wide Blackout Tuesday supposed to pause music enterprise happenings and concentrate on methods to guard and uplift the Black group. That very same 12 months, Diddy himself challenged the Recording Academy to reckon with their historical past of not respecting Black music “to the purpose that it ought to be.”
One of the crucial highly effective names in music, Diddy has traversed completely different genres and types of Black music all through his profession. The truth is, his new Billboard interview is in help of his forthcoming The Love Album: Off the Grid, his first studio album since 2010’s Final Prepare to Paris, a collaborative album with Daybreak Richard and Kalenna Harper billed underneath the Diddy — Soiled Cash moniker.
Diddy lamented how he “needed to compromise the uncut Blackness and soul” of the album as a result of his “intentions had been to get one other No. 1 file as an alternative of protecting the album uncut and soulful.” Regardless of his emotions concerning the challenge, Final Prepare to Paris — which peaked at No. 7 on the Billboard 200 — has undergone an attention-grabbing trajectory. “As time went on, folks had been in a position to join with the album, and it’s turn into a cult basic,” Diddy mused.
The three-time Grammy-winner, who was not too long ago awarded the worldwide icon award on the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, additionally touched on his extremely anticipated Verzuz battle towards Jermaine Dupri, saying “The one Verzuz I wish to have proper now could be Puff Daddy versus Diddy. The one individual I’m in competitors with is myself. However the battle with Jermaine isn’t off the desk. We’re nonetheless attempting to work it out, and I positively stay up for that.”
Click on right here to learn the total interview.