Diddy may have been acquitted of the most serious charges when the verdict of his trial came back in July, but a lot about the situation has stayed the same as the music mogul remains in jail awaiting sentencing. Sean Combs’ team is still trying to get him out on bail despite multiple failed attempts, new allegations against the rapper have popped up, and those who partied with Diddy back in the ‘90s are still speaking out about their experiences.
DJ Mark Ronson is the latest celeb to speak out, as his new memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City recalls what it was like to work for P. Diddy (who changed his name several times over the years). In an excerpt from the book, Ronson says (via US Weekly):
For all the gigs I played for Puff, he probably spoke five sentences to me. But even to me, the DJ, he emitted a chaotic energy that left me both starstruck and deeply unnerved.
He goes on to say that Diddy had “a tremendous amount of power and cachet” on Manhattan’s club scene and that he was capable of making or breaking people’s careers. Mark Ronson writes in the memoir:
He made people’s careers — playing gigs for him certainly helped mine — and his disapproval meant a certain kind of exile. ….Nobody thought of Puffy as a rapper, only as a force who could will anything into existence, no matter the cost.
Pretty much anyone who was alive in the 1990s had heard of Diddy’s infamous parties long before his current legal woes, but some celebrities like Kevin Hart have tried to distance themselves from the events due to accusations of what happened during “freak-offs.” Others like Nick Cannon have admitted to partying with Diddy, saying that everyone wanted to score an invite.
Mark Ronson says in Night People that he saw quite a few big names during his DJing gigs, writing:
He took over downtown — and then the Hamptons — until the whole city seemed to revolve around him and his parties. I’m sure he thought I was a great DJ, but on his mission to shake up New York society, it didn’t hurt to have a fresh-faced white kid from a nice family in the booth. When I got booked to play his parties, I’d look to the VIP area and see people like Muhammad Ali, Martha Stewart, Denzel [Washington] and the Duchess of York [Sarah Ferguson] all mingling. Everyone went.
It sounds like quite the experience Mark Ronson had working for Sean Combs, and while he does give the record exec credit for boosting his own career, it seems clear that Ronson was aware of how powerful Diddy was — enough to be “unnerved” during their rare interactions.
Diddy’s federal trial began in May, with a jury convicting him in July on two counts of transportation to engage in prostitution. He was found not guilty of the more-serious charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. The music mogul remains in jail awaiting sentencing — scheduled for October 3 — where he could be sentened to a maximum of 20 years in prison. Regardless of what happens at sentencing, however, Diddy is still facing dozens of civil lawsuits, so his legal troubles are far from over.
You can read more about Mark Ronson’s exploits as a DJ in his memoir Night People: How to Be a DJ in ’90s New York City, which is out now.
