16 | Rolling Stone | RollingStoneAus.com September, 2017R& R
The Hardest-
Working Man
in Hip-Hop
Last year, when Sean “Diddy” Combs
brought together artists from his Bad
Boy label for the massive Family Reunion
Tour, he hoped to produce a music
documentary similar to Madonna’s 1991
backstage whirlwind,Truth or Dare.“What
happened,” he says, “was something way
more complex and profound. Your life
flashes in front of you, and you get to deal
with some things.”
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A Bad Boy
Story,which is out now on Apple Music,
tells the tale of a record label that broke
artists like the Notorious B.I.G., Lil’ Kim,
Ma$e and Faith Evans (all of whom, with
the obvious exception of the late Biggie,
appeared on the Bad Boy tour). But
it’s also an intimate look at the label’s
monomaniacally hard-driven leader, with
testimonials from Jay-Z, Mary J. Blige,
Clive Davis and more. “How did he get
backstage? How did he get onstage? This
dude is everywhere,” says Nas, recalling
Combs’ meteoric early-Nineties rise from
college dropout to record-company intern
to head of an outfit that sold more than
40 million albums by 2000.A warts-and-all history of how
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs built one
of pop music’s biggest empiresGETTY IMAGESI
n “the defiant ones”, jimmy iovine remembers the first time he en-
countered Dr. Dre and protégé Snoop Dogg. “I said, ‘These guys are the same as Mick
and Keith’,” Iovine says. “ ‘They scare you, but the music brings you in.’ ” Iovine released
Dre’s The Chronic on Interscope, beginning a partnership that culminated with the
two selling Beats Electronics to Apple in 2014 for $3 billion. Their relationship is chroni-
cled in The Defiant Ones, which runs for four episodes on HBO. What may seem like a van-
ity project turns out to be a multilayered history of pop music, touching on Seventies arena
rock, gangsta rap and the digital revolution. Director Allen Hughes talked to friends from
Eminem to Bono, and pushed Dre to get personal, discussing his 1991 assault of journalist
Dee Barnes (“I was outta my fuckin’ mind,” Dre says). Iovine talks about the guilt he felt
for his role in the Nineties rap feuds: “I said, ‘Am I defending free speech, or am I funding
Hamas?’ ” Iovine says it was crucial to cover those moments, rather than just the success-
es. “That’s not a documentary – that’s a bar mitzvah,” he says. “I wanted you to know how
it felt, and it didn’t always feel pretty.” DAVID BROWNEDre and Jimmy’s
Excellent Adventure
A documentary traces the high rolling
and hard times of hip-hop’s odd coupleDiddy in
the studio,
1997BEATS
BUDS
Dre and
Iovine,
2009Several scenes paint Combs as an
uncompromising taskmaster. “Y’all play-
ing this shit like we a wedding band,” he
tells musicians during a rehearsal. There
are vulnerable moments too: He’s nearly
inconsolable after a show goes poorly; in
another scene, he reflects, “Maybe I tried
to do too much – I’m just disappointed
with myself”, before he shows us his arse
as his doctor administers a shot.
“If anything, it adds on to the myth of
a superhero, but it dispels the myth that
a superhero can’t be human,” Combs
adds. “But I’m a superhero that’s human,
banged up, burnt out...and went through
a lot.” CHRISTOPHER R. WEINGARTENDOCUMENTARIES