Celebrity
Puff Daddy to Diddy to Love – Sean Combs Discusses The significance Of His Name Changes
Sean Diddy Combs is on the cover of Vanity Fair giving details about everything from, what drives him, what each name change means and how he is defining his next era.
We have highlighted a few significant parts of the conversation below, via Vanity Fair.
Impeccably groomed, he still walks like a Harlem dude. It is an attitude as much as it is a rhythm, although he does move like a gymnast or dancer.
Combs is wearing the classic hip-hop uniform that he helped enshrine in our popular imagination: white tee, track pants, and diamonds.
A nameplate necklace with “Love” in bejeweled rose and white tones glimmers like neon pop art. He welcomes me and my assistant with a bear hug.
When I mention it is one of my first hugs since COVID-19 made human contact feel dangerous, he comes back in for another. Sean Combs likes to spread the love.
About where he is mentally and his name changes
“I am the happiest I’ve ever been in life, I laugh the most, I smile the most, I breathe the most,” he tells me. In a word, Combs has love on his mind.
L”ove” is Combs’s latest nom de plume. Born Sean Combs in Harlem in 1969, the 51-year-old businessman has had several names through the years. His staff talks about these as eras.
I ask Combs if that is how he thinks of them. “Yeah, I do,” he says without hesitation. The name changes are about the almost-billion-dollar brand he built.
Each one signals an ideology and a strategy. Combs calls them off easily enough. “You have the Puff Daddy era, that’s like this young, brash, bold hip-hop, unapologetic swagger on a million and just fearlessness and really doing it for the art and rooted, the only thing I know is hip-hop.
I don’t know about changing the world or anything like that as possible.” The Puff Daddy era is not just Combs’s cultural foundation, it is also a defining moment for pop culture.
As the late 1990s were giving way to the 21st century, Sean “Puff Daddy” Combs had taken hip-hop iconography to scale. Much has been made about the shiny suits and over-the-top videos that made Bad Boy Records, Combs’s eponymous record label, a massive hit factory.
The Diddy era was an homage to his brother Biggie, who clowned him about his rhythmic “diddy bop” swagger. “Then after Biggie, I just, and after all of that, I wanted to get into other businesses.
And so Biggie had called me Diddy because of my bop, the way I walk, my swagger, and they got something called the diddy bop, that just, it just happens to, it’s not me, it was something before me. That’s the diddy bop. It’s the way a brother would walk around, walk down the street.”
About his Legacy and what inspired the LOVE era
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As private traumas brought Combs closer to God, the public traumas that define the 2010s—police brutality, civil disobedience, and political retrenchment—forced him to take a hard look at his legacy.
I am amazed when he brings up #MeToo before mentioning Black Lives Matter. “If you living on this earth and you trying to keep on dealing with this shit, that ain’t the way we going to live.
And people out there that are tired of it. And it’s not just a Black and white thing. You know what I’m saying? It’s just tired of the way that it doesn’t have to be.
Like when they said it was over—when they said in the #MeToo, when it was over, it was over,” he says emphatically.
Combs sees #MeToo as a qualified sign of progress and evidence that celebrities can change the world. “The #MeToo movement, the truth, is that it inspired me. It showed me that you can get maximum change,” he says. What Combs wants now is for that maximum change to come for his tribe. Enter the Love era.
“My people taking time to feel like it’s all right to love. Take time to huddle up your tribe, take time to communicate and know your power. Take time to heal. You know what I’m saying, [taking care of] yourself without feeling like, oh, you’re going to be labeled a racist now because you talk about taking care of yourself.”
About Negative Critism He Faces
For his part, Combs tells me that he is not worried about bringing along those who disagree with him. “I can’t get caught up in that.
I know where my heart is at, and you can’t just do it alone with just Black people. You got to have all types of allies.
And that’s one thing I’m good at, I’m good at being a unifier, but I’m not going to be in a room with other tribes that protect themselves and make sure that they straight and not make sure that we straight.
But also, I’m not a politician, I’m not trying to be the king or the dictator of somebody. I’m a boy from Harlem that came here to make a change. We all have our story.”
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Read the entire Vanity Fair editorial here.
Cryptocurrency might be crashing and turning princes back into paupers, but The Weeknd is having none of that.
He recently teamed up with Binance, the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchange, for his latest tour.
A Historic Partnership
Photo credit: Forbes
Binance is the official After Hours Til Dawn tour sponsor, and it’s already made history by becoming the first global concert using Web3.
Binance is also working with HXOUSE, The Weeknd’s creative incubator, to craft exclusive NFTs and merchandise for this tour.
The Weeknd loves this partnership because Binance cares about inclusion and the community.
He also believes that crypto has unlimited possibilities, and we are just at the starting point.
The partnership also benefits the musician’s XO Humanitarian Fund; this is a fund that works with the United Nations World Food Program.
Binance has funded the fund with $2 million, and 5% of sales from NFTs sold during the tour.
And the singer wants the fund to offer life-saving support to those on the verge of starvation.
In fact, when the fund launched in March, The Weeknd donated $500,000 and promised to donate $1 for every ticket he sold in North America.
The World Food Program also refused to be left behind, donating a further $1 million.
Pushing Through A Slump
Photo credit: Twitter – Binance
It’s no secret that billions of dollars have been lost in the crypto market.
But it’s not the end of the market, according to the Hedge Trust CEO, Eric Zhou.
Even though the crypto market has taken massive hits, collaborations like this show how cutting-edge Web3 might be given a chance.
The partnership has already shown innovation through NFT tickets, merchandise, metaverse projects, and more.
Zhou added that for as long as crypto remains viable and accepted by countries, he is optimistic about the future and will ensure his company remains at the forefront.
The Weeknd: Pushing Boundaries
Photo credit: Twitter – The Weeknd
The Weeknd is also optimistic about the future of crypto if this partnership is an indicator.
Time will tell if crypto returns to its former highs, but at least we are getting a kickass Weeknd tour out of it.
LeBron James loves giving back, and we love him for that.
Through the LeBron James Family Foundation, he announced opening the I Promise HealthQuarters.
A Healthcare Center for the Community
Photo credit: Twitter – LeBron James Family Foundation
This is a multimillion-dollar facility in Ohio that offers a range of medical services like:
- Lab services
- Dental
- Optometry
- Pharmaceutical
- Mental health
I Promise HealthQuarters will open next year and close to other I Promise facilities like the I Promise Village and I Promise School.
The medical center has teamed up with local health providers who include:
- Peg’s Foundation
- Coleman Health Services
- AxessPointe
Together, they plan to give local residents affordable healthcare.
Coming Together
Photo credit: Twitter – LeBron James Family Foundation
According to LeBron, it takes a whole village to raise a child the right way, and that’s what he’s trying to do through his Foundation.
And the LeBron James Family Foundation executive director, Michele Campbell, revealed that their work will keep expanding in ways they never thought possible.
Accessing affordable healthcare is essential for low-income families, and this need was heightened thanks to Covid.
So, the Foundation brought the community together to create a roof with all the experts.
Naturally, this would not be possible without help from like-minded partners who also wanted to help the community.
In 2018, I Promise School was launched courtesy of the LeBron James Family Foundation and Akron Public Schools.
Its mission was, and remains, to help the community’s most at-risk students.
This is a mission LeBron takes personally because he visited the students himself on the last day of school.
LeBron James: A Grounded Philanthropist
Photo credit: Twitter – LeBron James
LeBron recently became a billionaire.
But he’s not letting that get to his head.
Instead, he is following basketball legend Michael Jordan’s example.
Last year, Jordan donated $10 million for new and affordable medical clinics.
With stars helping out the community personally, the next generation is in safe hands.
LeBron is already the MVP when it comes to basketball.
So, it should not be surprising that his trading cards also go for historical sums.
But in this case, the trading card sold for less than expected.
The LeBron James Triple Logoman was expected to sell at a world-record $6.6 million or even higher.
At least, this is what publications expected.
And, to be fair, it would have surprised no one if the trading card sold at that figure.
After all, the last LeBron trading card sold for $5.2 million; not a figure to sneeze at.
How They Estimated The Figure
Photo credit: MARCA
The LeBron James Triple Logoman trading card is a distinct one-off card.
It is the only card with authentic game-used patches from every NBA team LeBron has played for:
- Los Angeles Lakers
- Miami Heat
- Cleveland Cavaliers
Bidding also started at $500,000, a reasonable sum for a LeBron trading card but an astronomical figure for most other sportspersons.
After all, one of the basketballer’s cards from his rookie 2003-2004 season sold for a staggering $5.2 million in 2021.
Before that, a similar card sold for $1.8 million in 2020.
Based on this trajectory, the latest trading card should have broken the world-record fee.
But who holds the world record?
The Rival
Photo credit: Wikimedia Commons
The record-holder is a Honus Wagner T206 baseball card.
Around 50 Honus Wagner cards exist, though this didn’t seem to matter to the bidders last year.
The card sold for a world-record $6.6 million fee, a record it still holds.
Better Luck Next Time?
Photo credit: Twitter – LeBron James
LeBron is among the world’s most recognizable athletes.
And his current billionaire status will only help increase the value of any future trading cards.
After all, you don’t see many billionaire athletes out there.
Time will tell, of course, but it’s almost certain that one of his trading cards will break that record in the next couple of years.
The Weeknd and Binance Start World’s First ‘Crypto-Powered’ World Tour
LeBron James Family Foundation To Open Multimillion-Dollar Ohio Medical Center
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