Sean “Diddy” Combs Refused to Put BIG on Magazine Cover After His Death

In the months since Notorious B.I.G.’s death, Sean “Diddy” Combs’ inner circle has been baffled by his callousness. The rapper’s murder left people devastated, but some believed Diddy was using it as a way to promote himself. When his record label, Bad Boy, had the opportunity to put an artist on the cover of Rolling Stone, label president Kirk Burrowes pleaded for Biggie to take the spot. Diddy took it for himself.

Sean “Diddy” Combs Wanted to Get on Magazine Cover Because of Notorious B.I.G.

Two weeks after Biggie’s murder, his second and final album, Life after deathwas released. Diddy put all his efforts into promoting it. According to LaJoyce Brookshire, a Bad Boy employee, he refused her request to take time off to grieve.

A few months later, Rolling Stone approached Bad Boy Records about getting him a cover. Burrowes thought Biggie was the obvious choice given his recent death and the success of his record. Diddy disagreed. He wanted the cover for himself.

“I was like, ‘Let’s make him a Biggie. You still have a chance (for a cover in the future),'” Burrowes told Rolling Stone. “He was like, ‘No, he’s dead. I’m putting out (Combs’ debut album, No way out) in July. I have to be on the cover of Rolling Stone.”

He admitted that Biggie’s death had benefited sales of his first album.

“I think his passing helped the fame,” Combs told Rolling Stone in 1999. “At least 2 million (of the nearly 5 million copies of No way“The sales were simply due to his death. And that’s not necessarily a good thing, but it’s the reality.”

Sean “Diddy” Combs says he feels partly responsible for Notorious B.I.G.’s death

Although Diddy admitted to benefiting from Biggie’s death in some ways, he said he also felt responsible for it.

“I think I’ll always feel some kind of responsibility because I’m in this business with him,” he said on The Wendy Williams Show in 2017 (via ABC News). “He’s my artist.”

He added that Biggie was supposed to fly to London that night. Instead, he stayed in Los Angeles, where he was killed in a drive-by shooting.

“He was supposed to go to London that night and I let him talk me into not going and staying in L.A.,” Diddy said. “That’s something that’s really bothered me my whole life. Sometimes you really have to make that decision deep down and deep down, it was like, ‘You have to get on a plane.’”

He added that he still regrets not flying Biggie.

He gave the rapper his publishing rights in 2023

More than two decades after Biggie’s death, Diddy gave up his publishing rights. Many Bad Boy artists said they didn’t get a fair deal, and Diddy took steps to change that in 2023. The assets returned to Biggie and other artists are reportedly worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

“Combs sees this as part of a larger goal of promoting economic empowerment for Black artists and culture,” a source told Variety.