Sean 'Diddy' Combs attends the premiere of Fox's 'The Four: Battle For Stardom' Season 2 at CBS Studios - Radford on May 30, 2018 in Studio City, California.
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Diddy has spoken out about the opportunities denied to black people in the entertainment industry. Citing exaples such as Black Panther and Black-ish, as well as the popularity of hip-hop on streaming platforms, Sean Combs told Variety in a new interview that the lack of black people in top-level positions in the industry is tantamount to segregation.
“There was segregation, as well as blatant racism, and there still is,” he is quoted as saying. “You have these record companies that are making so much money off our culture, our art form, but they’re not investing or even believing in us."
“For all the billions of dollars that these black executives have been able to make them, [there’s still hesitation] to put them in the top-level positions. They’ll go and they’ll recruit cats from overseas,” Diddy continues. “It makes sense to give [executives of color] a chance and embrace the evolution, instead of it being that we can only make it to president, senior VP. … There’s no black CEO of a major record company. That’s just as bad as the fact that there are no [black] majority owners in the NFL. That’s what really motivates me.”
Elsewhere in the interview Diddy calls Black Panther "a cruel experiment,” and suggests he is taking a break from music right now. “I feel like we’re in a new disruptive time, and when I announce what I’m doing with music it’ll be equally as disruptive as Bad Boy was,” he says of his eventual return.
Read the full Variety interview here.
