As the trial of Sean “Diddy” Combs continues in New York, attention is turning to the rapper and music mogul’s relationships with other celebrities, particularly Canadian superstar Justin Bieber.
Combs, 55, is facing sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution, and racketeering conspiracy charges after being arrested in September last year. He has denied any accusations of wrongdoing and rejected a government plea deal offer.
Bieber, now 31, frequently appeared alongside Diddy when he was a teen pop idol but moved on Thursday to dismiss online speculation that he too might have been abused by Combs.
“Although Justin is not among Sean Combs’ victims, there are individuals who were genuinely harmed by him,” a representative told TMZ. “Shifting focus away from this reality detracts from the justice these victims rightfully deserve.”
Sources speaking to TMZ also dismissed the pair’s past public appearances as “performative” and claimed Bieber was actually friends with Diddy’s sons.
Below we look at the origins of the relationship between the former teen idol and ‘Big Brother Puff’ and what has happened since then.
Diddy befriended a teenage Bieber
The duo appear to have met early on in Bieber’s career, shortly after he signed with Usher and Scooter Braun’s label RBMG Records in 2008, when he was just 14 years old.
In November 2009, Bieber uploaded a video to his official YouTube channel titled “JUSTIN BIEBER’s 48 HRS with DIDDY!!”
“You ever seen the movie 48 Hours?" Diddy asks the camera after presenting his protege with a silver Lamborghini, referring to the 1980s buddy movie starring Eddie Murphy.
“Right now [Justin is] having 48 hours with Diddy, him and his boy. They’re having the times of their lives. Like, where we hanging out and what we’re doing, we can’t really disclose. But it’s definitely a 15-year-old’s dream.”
The producer continues: “I have been given custody of him. You know, he’s signed to Usher, and I had legal guardianship of Usher when he did his first album… We’re gonna go full. Buck full crazy.”
He then asks Bieber what he wants to do with the day and the teen responds: “Let’s just go get some girls.” Diddy approves of the suggestion and calls Bieber “a man after my own heart.”
In another video dating from a year later that recently resurfaced on social media, Bieber is seen working in a recording studio when Diddy arrives unexpectedly.
“What’s up man, you good? Selling out arenas and everything?” Diddy asks, before pivoting to a more challenging, resentful tone: “Starting to act different, huh? You haven’t been calling me and hanging out the way we used to hang out.”
“Well I mean, you haven’t... you tried to get in contact with me through all my, you know, my partners and whatnot, but you never really got my number,” Bieber stutters in response.
“So, you want my number? I’m gonna tell you my number.”
Did 'Big Brother Puff' make veiled warnings?
In 2011, the pair appeared together on ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live! and were asked by the late-night host about how they first became acquainted.
Diddy answered somewhat cryptically that they became friends “in a strange way” before adding: “We wanna protect [Justin] because he’s genuinely such a nice person besides his talents.”
Asked about the sports car in the earlier video, the producer clarified: “[He had] the Lamborghini for a day or two and he had access to the house. And he knows better than to be talking about the things that he does with Big Brother Puff on national television. Everything ain’t for everybody.”
Their public appearances became much more sporadic thereafter but, in 2014, a shirtless Bieber was seen attending Diddy’s Ciroc vodka party at the Vanquish Lounge in Atlanta, Georgia.
More recently, Diddy and Bieber were seen greeting each other in another video from 2021 in which the older man appears to pat the singer down, leading some fans to speculate retrospectively that he might have been checking to see if Bieber was wearing a police wire.
Two years after that, Bieber made a guest appearance on the track “Moments” from Diddy’s fifth studio record, The Love Album: Off the Grid (2023).
Diddy’s arrest and the impact on Bieber
When Diddy was arrested last year, The Daily Mail quoted friends of Bieber as saying he was so unnerved by the allegations that he was close to “shutting down.”
“Bieber is so disturbed by the Diddy news and is unwilling to process it or discuss it so he has shut off,” they said. “So many people who helped to make him who he is were very close to Diddy and it has completely thrown him.
“He had a long break from Diddy when he believes most of this took place and he had distanced himself from him. He was featured on Diddy's most recent album, and had he known any of this, there is no way he would have done it.”
Another source close to Bieber at the time told People magazine that the arrest was “not anything that he wants to focus on” and that he preferred instead to remain in “a happy bubble” with his wife and newborn son.
Diddy trial begins with lurid allegations
Combs is facing a five-count indictment accusing him of sex trafficking, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy.
This week’s proceedings at the Daniel Moynihan Courthouse in Manhattan have included graphic testimony from his former girlfriend Cassie Ventura about the abuse she alleges she was subjected to during their relationship and the drug-fuelled “freak-off” sex parties Combs is accused of orchestrating.
Under his instructions, Ventura would engage in sex acts with male sex workers while Combs masturbated and filmed the encounters, the trial has heard. Each “freak off” would last anywhere from 36 to 48 hours, with the longest Ventura ever participated in spanning four days, she testified.
During one “freak off,” a blow-up baby pool was filled with baby oil that Combs instructed Ventura to get into in her “outfit” and shoes, she testified.
“It was such a mess,” she testified. “I was like, ‘What are we doing?’”
