In Part I of this series on the overlap between the worlds of Sean \u201cDiddy\u201d Combs and Jeffrey Epstein, we examine Combs\u2019 early years, his mentors and the industry figures who ensured their, as well as Combs\u2019 own, commercial success. Ties to organized crime and intelligence are readily apparent and point toward a truly sinister reason behind this network\u2019s patronage of Combs and his close associates, like Andre Harrell and Russell Simmons.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Beginning in late 2023, a series of startling and unsettling allegations against Sean Combs \u2013\u2013 a record executive and rapper known over the years by stage names like \u201cPuff Daddy,\u201d \u201cP. Diddy\u201d and presently \u201cDiddy\u201d \u2013\u2013 have emerged. As the allegations and lawsuits facing Combs have snowballed, so, too, has public interest in the case. The sheer amount of accusations suggests that Combs, in addition to being very sexually and physically violent, filmed many assault encounters and orgies that occurred at his now notorious \u201cFreak Off\u201d parties, sometimes with hidden or security cameras. He also now stands\u00a0accused of<\/a>\u00a0\u201coperating an empire of sexual crimes,\u201d with federal agents\u00a0having alleged<\/a>\u00a0that several of Combs\u2019 victims were of \u201cbarely legal\u201d or \u201cbarely illegal\u201d age at the time of their abuse. Combs\u2019 apparent documentation of these events strongly suggests that he was interested in keeping these records for more than his perverse enjoyment, as either a form of a protection or as a means to control those who appeared in these films, i.e. blackmail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As a result, speculation has grown about who is allegedly on the \u201clist\u201d of people filmed by Combs in this way, prompting comparisons to the alleged \u201clist\u201d of sex trafficker, pedophile and intelligence asset Jeffrey Epstein. The comparisons between Epstein and Combs have only grown, with even the homeland security agents who raided Combs\u2019 Miami home suggesting that Combs was \u201cas bad as Epstein<\/a>.\u201d<\/p> However, as has long been a theme of\u00a0Unlimited Hangout<\/em>\u2019s\u00a0Epstein-related reporting<\/a>, including the book\u00a0One Nation Under Blackmail<\/em><\/a>, the Jeffrey Epstein case has been poorly explored by the federal government, mainstream media outlets, and even many independent media outlets. A deeper examination of the Epstein case makes it clear that Epstein was not the sole mastermind or sole beneficiary of the sex trafficking and blackmail operation in which he engaged. Instead, Epstein served as an operator for a larger, monied network of oligarchs with extensive organized crime connections in addition to significant affiliations with intelligence agencies. He was also more than a sex trafficker for this group, having aided this network extensively in arms trafficking, money laundering and other crimes (many financial) that fall outside of the focus on his sex-related offenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It should come as no surprise upon closer examination of Sean Combs that, like Epstein, he was operating on behalf of a larger network that he did not ultimately control. Instead, it arguably controlled him. As this three-part series from\u00a0Unlimited Hangout<\/em>\u00a0will endeavor to show, Combs was acting on behalf of an oligarch network that directly overlaps with that of Epstein. However, Combs used to influence a different industry and a different community for the benefit of these intelligence and organized crime-connected oligarchs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Part I of this series, we will examine the often overlooked early years of Combs and his entrance into the music industry. While Combs\u2019 own rise (from birth to the founding of Bad Boy Records in 1993) is certainly chronicled, a major focus of this piece is on the mentors and figures who facilitated his rise into the upper echelons of hip hop celebrity, especially Andre Harrell and Clive Davis, as well as other figures who had a significant influence on Combs\u2019 early career into the music industry, like Russell Simmons. Not only did these figures bring Combs into the music industry, they also stand accused of initiating Combs into the types of activities he is now in prison for, awaiting trial.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also explored in this piece are the corporations behind the success of Combs\u2019 mentors and later Combs himself, namely the Music Corporation of America (MCA) and Arista Records. When taken together with other claims from the period, namely about efforts to manipulate hip hop for the benefit of the private prison industry in the early to mid-1990s, it appears that this network\u2019s interest in Combs, as well as his mentors, was part of something much larger that sought to target not just the hip hop industry itself, but the African-American community at large.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Subsequent installments of this series will examine Combs\u2019 activities \u2013\u2013 in music, in retail and beyond \u2013\u2013 and how the same network detailed in Part I also enabled those activities, which notably parallel Combs\u2019 deeper descent into acts of sexual violence and abuse. Another installment will examine how one close associate of Combs also connects very directly with the sex trafficking activities of Jeffrey Epstein, indicating that the overlap between the two cases is more significant than previous reporting and the current cases against Combs have suggested.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Sean Combs was born in Harlem, NY on November 4, 1969 to a schoolteacher and ex-model named Janice Combs (n\u00e9e Smalls) and Melvin Earl Combs, an Air Force serviceman and sometimes associate of\u00a0American Gangster\u00a0<\/em>heroin kingpin Frank Lucas<\/a>. Melvin Combs helped make ends meet by running a number of legal and less-than-legal operations; including a cab and limousine chauffeuring company, multiple bars Combs owned, and a portion of Harlem drug traffic.i<\/sup>\u00a0A toddler-aged Combs tagged along with Melvin on visits to Lucas\u2019 home, even playing with his daughter. According\u00a0to an interview<\/a>\u00a0prior to his death, the aged gangster alleged that Combs didn\u2019t share his toys.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI learned early in life that there\u2019s only two ways out of that [lifestyle]: dead or in jail,\u201d\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0Combs in 2013, speaking of his father\u2019s lifestyle. \u201cIt made me work even harder\u2026 I have his hustler\u2019s mentality.\u201d According to contemporaries, Melvin was an immaculate dresser. While less flashy than Lucas, who once attracted the attention of the feds by sitting ringside at a Muhammad Ali \u2013Joe Frazier bout in a $100,000 fur coat, Melvin still pulled out enough stops to be granted the street nickname \u201cPretty Melvin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Sean Combs was 3 years old, Melvin Combs was gunned down while sitting in a loitering car near Central Park West. Per Susan Traugh,\u00a0Melvin was shot in the head<\/a>, likely at point blank range considering he was seated in his Mercedes-Benz\u2014this manner of a hit is consistent with an enforcer killing.ii<\/sup>\u00a0According to an interview conducted by author Zack O\u2019Malley-Greenburg, someone in Melvin Combs\u2019 circle believed he was about to inform on a sensitive business deal to law enforcement and that this is what precipitated his murder.iii\u00a0<\/sup>From this, former associates and law enforcement have speculated that Melvin Combs was a federal informant. If allegations from incarcerated contemporaneous label heads like Suge Knight and former bodyguards are to believed, Sean Combs may have done the same, allegedly\u00a0informing<\/a>\u00a0for the FBI over the course of his career.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A recent\u00a0article<\/a>\u00a0from journalist Legs McNeil lays out the Lucas-Combs criminal enterprise in greater detail than previously reported. It also shows that Melvin Combs, in addition to his dealings with Lucas, had an arguably deeper affiliation with the Gambino crime family near the end of his life. The Gambinos may have even put out his hit. McNeil writes:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Melvin Combs, a small-time hustler, was introduced to selling heroin when Lucas fronted him several kilos from his Golden Triangle connection. He joined the crew of Willie Abraham, the 42-year-old owner of the Harlem Gold Lounge and a convicted heroin dealer who\u2019d already spent five years in jail. Unlike Lucas, Abraham was getting his heroin from the Mafia\u2014specifically, the Gambino crime family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In 1971, Melvin was arrested for possession of heroin and $45,000 in cash. When Abraham\u2019s heroin\u2010cutting mill was raided later that year, and Abraham was charged with participating in an extensive conspiracy to distribute $5 million a year in heroin at the wholesale level in Harlem, the Bronx, and Westchester County, Melvin was suspected by Alphonse \u201cFunzi\u201d Sisca, head of the Gambinos\u2019 New Jersey crew, of being a rat.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n McNeil also noted that \u201cThe New York Times\u00a0<\/em>reported that the prosecutor in the Abraham case told the judge that law enforcement believed Melvin\u2019s murder \u2018might ultimately be traced to members of the heroin\u2010distributing conspiracy.\u2019\u201d A newspaper clipping from the\u00a0Saturday, February 24th, 1973 edition of the\u00a0New York Daily News<\/em><\/a>\u00a0reveals that the Gambino-backed Willie Abraham crew had plenty or reason to suspect Combs of informing or at least blamed him for the arrests. The article notes that their relationship to Combs appears to have led directly to Abraham and his collaborators\u2019 convictionson conspiracy charges, including Gambino man Alphonso Sisca of New Jersey:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Willie Abraham [\u2026] was found guilty in Manhattan Federal Court yesterday of being a kingpin narcotics wholesaler whose ring flooded the metropolitan area with more than 1,000 pounds of drugs in 2 1\/2 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A task force of federal, state and local cops smashed the ring in a series of raids in December 1971 as the result of information obtained through the court approved wiretaps on another big time narcotics dealer\u2019s phone. The dealer, Melvin Combs, 31, of 1853 Central Ave., Yonkers, was found shot to death in January 1972 on Manhattan\u2019s West Side.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This evidence of a reported \u201cwiretap\u201d supports the claim that Abraham and his Gambino Family backers had Combs murdered because they blamed him for the arrests, regardless of whether Combs had actually been an informant. Throughout this article, connections to the Gambino crime family, as well as the Genovese crime family, are a recurring theme.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the earliest years of his life, Sean Combs lived in\u00a0Esplanade Gardens<\/a>. His mother Janice recognized the performative, attention-hungry character her son possessed early on. This led to Combs\u2019 first advertising gig at the age of 2, when he starred in a Baskin-Robbins TV commercial. Later, Combs modeled alongside\u00a0The Wiz\u00a0<\/em>actress Stephanie Mills in\u00a0Essence\u00a0<\/em>magazine. Following in his mother\u2019s footsteps, these early modeling jobs presaged Combs\u2019 lifelong relationship with the modeling industry, which in comparable fashion to Jeffrey Epstein, would eventually become the hunting grounds which Combs would scour for victims for his orgiastic sexual blackmail parties and pathological predation.iv<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n During his middle school years, Combs\u2019 mother Janice relocated the family to Westchester, a middle-class suburb of Mount Vernon. Combs enrolled in the prestigious Mount Saint Michael Academy (MSMA), a Catholic school located in the Bronx, where his popularity eventually soared due to his exploits on the varsity football team, which won a division title during his time there. Combs\u2019 hopes of receiving a scholarship to play D1 in college came crashing down when he broke his leg during his senior year. Yet, it was already too late for his confidence. He was reportedly given the nickname \u201cPuffy\u201d due to the way he strutted around with his chest puffed out.v<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n Throughout his middle and high school years, Combs also exhibited an entrepreneurial streak, reportedly selling T-shirts and ties at Macy\u2019s while working multiple newspaper routes simultaneously. This early relationship with Macy\u2019s prefigures both his later\u00a0merchandising deals with the department store<\/a>, which saw his fragrance line\u00a0Sean John<\/em>\u00a0stock the shelves nationwide, and the recent\u00a0lawsuit<\/a>\u00a0filed by a John Doe from Ohio who alleges that Combs \u201corally raped\u201d him in the stockroom of the flagship Macy\u2019s in New York in 2008. His accuser alleges that Macy\u2019s even endeavored to cover up the crime in order to preserve their lucrative business relationship. While speculative, there is a possibility that this may have even been the same Macy\u2019s that had employed Combs as a minor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Notably, while Combs attended the all-boys Mount Saint Michael\u2019s Academy, a major sex abuse case involving minor victims that led to the indictments of two faculty members was brewing at the institution. Marist Brother Timothy Brady \u2013\u2013 the principal of MSMA for the entirety of Combs\u2019 high school career \u2014\u00a0was arrested, charged, and sentenced to prison<\/a>\u00a0in 1988 for the abuse of three minor boys at the Catholic Academy in the Bronx over the course of 1987, Combs\u2019 senior year. Following the \u201886\/\u201987 academic year, Br. Brady was quietly removed from his position and shipped off to a Marist retreat in Arizona. Despite his crimes, Brady was reinstated as a hockey moderator at a separate Marist Brothers institution in the 1990s, once again providing him access to minors, and was listed on the Marist Brothers website until 2010. For some inexplicable reason, the\u00a0court records pertaining to Brady\u2019s conviction and incarceration remain sealed.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n Accusations of sexual impropriety appear to have been a constant in MSMA\u2019s history. In 2011, a former assistant principal received a sweetheart no-jail sentence after\u00a0pleading guilty to possession of child porn<\/a>\u00a0on an electronic device at the school. From 2009 to 2012, a lawsuit filed by Brian Elliott sought monetary damages for the routine abuse and rape he alleges he suffered at the hands of an MSMA employee named Br. Galligan between the ages of 8 and 13 over the years of 1977 through 1983. The case wound its way through various\u00a0Delaware<\/a>, New York, and\u00a0appellate courts<\/a>. If factual, Elliott\u2019s victimization by Galligan would have ended around the time of Combs\u2019 freshman year in high school, meaning Elliott and Combs were close in age.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n More recently, multiple cases seeking redress of child sexual abuse suffered at the hands of the MSMA faculty have been filed pursuant to New York\u2019s Child Victims Act and the \u201clook-back window\u201d that has enabled past victims previously barred from filing complaints by the statute of limitations to now pursue them. These include a\u00a0torts CVA complaint<\/a>\u00a0filed on behalf of a John Doe suing the Academy & the Marist Brothers of the Schools for having enabled his abuse at the hands of Principal Brady, who allegedly fondled the plaintiff in the nurse\u2019s office in 1985 when Doe was 16. It appears this unnamed potential victim would have been in the same class as Combs. Quoting from the complaint, \u201cUpon information and belief, at all relevant times, Defendants knew that priests and brothers of the Catholic Church and within the Marist Brothers, under their supervision and control, were grooming and sexually molesting children with whom the priests and brothers would have contact in their ministry and pastoral functions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another lawsuit accusing\u00a0the Marist Brothers of protecting a pedophile faculty member named Brother Lee advanced<\/a>\u00a0in the Supreme Court of Bronx County in 2023, surviving multiple motions for dismissal & summary judgment, seemingly indicating that multiple members of the school\u2019s faculty \u2013\u2013 including its principal \u2013\u2013 were perpetrating sex crimes against minors during Combs\u2019 high school career. And once again, the complainant alleges that he was abused by Brother Lee between the years of 1984 and 1985, when he was 15-16 years of age, conclusively indicating that he also would have been in Combs\u2019 class of 1987. Taking all of this information into account, it appears that sexual abuse was endemic and widespread at MSMA during Combs\u2019 time there. While impossible to confirm, there is a possibility that Combs was groomed or among the victims or else somehow connected to these aforementioned cases. Certainly, those type of experiences early in life are statistically associated with a person offending in similar ways later in life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Also, as an aside, the FBI and DA\u2019s office appear to have used the fraught climate at MSMA to initiate a COINTELPRO-inspired\u00a0smear and lawfare campaign<\/a>\u00a0against Fr. Bernard Lynch, the first gay married priest and Fordham-trained Irish psychotherapist, who inspired a\u00a0\u201cwitch-hunt\u201d<\/a>\u00a0organized by the Vatican, archdiocese, and the FBI in retaliation to his outspoken advocacy for gay rights. More specifically, Lynch had\u00a0founded Dignity NY, the first gay ministry in New York City in 1982<\/a>, bringing him to the attention of Mayor Ed Koch, who drafted him onto his AIDS Task Force.vi<\/sup><\/p>\n\n\n\n While attending Mount St. Michael\u2019s, a teenage Combs began frequenting several New York nightclubs, which reportedly led to his first encounter with the music industry and famous musicians like Michael Jackson. As detailed in an\u00a0interview<\/a>, given in 1994 shortly after launching Bad Boy Records, Combs seemingly claimed he was cast as a background dancer in one of Jackson\u2019s videos as a teen:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAround the age of 16 or 17, I started dancing, going to the various clubs, and that was during the time when somebody\u2014(if) a big artist like Diana Ross, Fine Young Cannibals, or even Michael Jackson had a video\u2014the directors would come into the clubs and see all the kids that were dancing and pick various dancers to be in the videos. So I got picked to be in some of those videos, and, um, as I was dancing in videos and stuff like that, I would see the behind the scenes. I was about to go to college at Howard University and I didn\u2019t know what I wanted to do. So I saw the people behind the scenes, and I was like, \u2018that\u2019s maybe something I wanted to do\u2019, so I started like asking questions and getting information on the music industry\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Combs\u2019 apparent encounter with Michael Jackson, while still only a teenage dancer on the NY club circuit, presages the significant\u00a0relationship<\/a>\u00a0that later emerged between the music mogul and the King of Pop, which lasted for decades until Jackson\u2019s\u00a0premature and suspicious death<\/a>. These interlocks between Combs and Jackson are worth mentioning for a few reasons: both artists have\u00a0grappled with accusations of sexual abuse<\/a>; both men have spent years\u00a0surrounded by Zionist powerbrokers<\/a>\u00a0(within and\u00a0outside of<\/a>\u00a0the music industry) who ingratiated themselves into their good graces or insinuated their way into their circles; and both\u00a0Combs and Jackson cultivated close friendships with billionaire Epstein affiliate and Bill Clinton associate, Ron Burkle<\/a>. For instance, Burkle, who will be a focus of Part II of this series for his ties to Combs, was close to Jackson and later\u00a0purchased Jackson\u2019s infamous Neverland Ranch estate for $22 million in 2020. Burkle is also reportedly the godfather to Combs\u2019 children<\/a>. While developing his ties to both Jackson and Combs, Burkle was a frequent flier on Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s infamous private jet \u2013\u2013 the \u201cLolita Express\u201d \u2013\u2013 particularly on flights including former President Bill Clinton, who he employed as an advisor to his firm, the Yucaipa Companies around the same period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following his graduation from Mount St. Michael Academy, Combs enrolled at the prestigious Howard University in Washington, DC to study business in 1987. He promptly set about further inflating his street cred as he expanded his horizons into a new popularity-maximizing enterprise \u2013\u2013\u00a0\u00a0party planning and promotion<\/a>. His parties were described by classmates as offering a \u201conce-in-a-lifetime type of vibe\u201d and Combs spared no expense in spreading the word, driving around campus in his convertible to pass out fliers for events. Author Susan Traugh wrote that some of Combs\u2019 collegiate parties\u00a0attracted thousands of guests<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Comb\u2019s entrance onto the hip hop scene began during his freshman year when Combs scored a side-gig as rapper-beatboxer Doug E. Fresh\u2019s valet, where he \u201cshuttl[ed] Fresh\u2019s clothes to and from the dry cleaner in his Volkswagen Rabbit convertible.\u201dvii\u00a0<\/sup>All the while, Combs organized parties in and around the Beltway as well as back home in New York City on the weekends. He was also a background dancer in one of Fresh\u2019s music videos around this time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While at Howard, the darker, predatory side of Combs\u2019 reputation also began to take shape, with accusations of belligerence, sexual harassment, and domestic violence following in his wake. Contemporaneous accounts provided by sources\u00a0to\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a>\u00a0tell of Combs beating a girlfriend with his belt in full view of the public on the Howard quad. Another time, he tapped on the glass window of an English class in session to try and coax a woman into skipping. On another occasion, he non-consensually caressed a woman\u2019s back and asked her if he could introduce her to \u201cone of his friends.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n By age 20, Combs had begun focusing more of his attention on his nascent internship and career at Uptown Records, a job he had first secured in 1990 via his Mount Vernon neighbor, the rapper Heavy D. Combs\u2019 initiative soon saw him become former Def Jam recordman Andre Harrell\u2019s intern. He commuted from Howard to NYC via Amtrak in the mornings, stowing away in the bathroom to avoid paying fare. He also shadowed party promoter Jessica Rosenblum during the planning stages for Heavy D\u2019s platinum-album celebration. Rosenblum \u201cobliged his requests to take him to all the \u2018freaky\u2019 nightspots on the Lower East Side.\u201dviii<\/sup>\u00a0Rosenblum takes credit for having introduced Combs to some of the biggest names among NY scenesters and club kids \u2014 as well as updating his eyewear fashion. Rosenblum graduated from her hip hop party promoter career to\u00a0become a NYC interior designer wedded to Steve Young, head of global litigation for one of the Big 4 Accounting firms, Ernst & Young<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In the late 1980s, while still a student at Howard, Combs learned that Uptown Records\u2019 A&R (artists and repertoire) executive had vacated the company. Combs took his boss Andre Harrell out to lunch to press for the job and, after a successful schmooze, soon transformed himself into one of the youngest talent scouts in the industry.ix\u00a0<\/sup>Combs later\u00a0told\u00a0Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a>\u00a0that, after joining Uptown, \u201cAndre became like my big brother. He bought a mansion, gave me a room [. . .] Not a mansion, a big house. It was a mansion to me, though, and he had gave [sic] me a room in the house.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Prior to his mentorship of Sean Combs, Uptown\u2019s Andre Harrell first\u00a0broke into the nascent hip hop industry<\/a>\u00a0by way of his rap duo Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde, which he and a friend had formed in high school. Harrell withdrew from Lehman College in 1983 to focus on his career as an\u00a0account executive selling airtime for New York all-news AM station WINS<\/a>. WINS was previously owned by radio pioneer J. Elroy McCaw, an ex-OSS agent and member of the Advisory Council to the US National Security Council.x<\/sup>\u00a0McCaw hired trailblazing disc jockey Allan Freed to man the mic at the station, a deal that was brokered by record executive Morris Levy.xi<\/sup>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Per Potash, a US Assistant Attorney later claimed that Levy\u2019s jazz label Roulette Records, boosted by his relationship with WINS\u2019 Freed \u2013\u2013\u00a0 the most popular DJ in the country in the 1950s and 1960s \u2013\u2013 was a \u201cway station for heroin trafficking.\u201d Levy and Roulette were also\u00a0linked to organized crime<\/a>, specifically\u00a0the Genovese crime family<\/a>. Levy was notably\u00a0the main financier\u00a0<\/a>behind the first hip hop record label, Sugar Hill. The zenith of Freed\u2019s celebrity was exemplified by Paramount Pictures hiring him at a rate of $29,000 per day to make a teen movie in 1957. Shortly thereafter, Freed was targeted by a smear campaign, resulting in him being unceremoniously and inexplicably fired by McCaw in 1958. Freed was singled out by Orrin Hatch\u2019s Congressional committee during the first \u201cpayola\u201d scandal involving the bribing of radio stations in return for singles plays. As a result, Freed became the face of the scandal, his career in shambles. As Potash writes regarding Freed\u2019s downfall, \u201cMorris Levy, the source of much of the payola bribe money, was never called to testify.\u201dxii<\/sup>\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Months after joining WINS, Harrell\u2019s job prospects experienced a dramatic upswing when he met Russell Simmons, co-founder of the Def Jam record label, who would later become very close to Sean Combs. Simmons soon offered Harrell a job with Def Jam. Within two short years (a rapid ascent mirroring Combs\u2019 own), Harrell worked his way up to VP and general manager of the label. Def Jam\u2019s early success was due in part to its\u00a01984 distribution deal<\/a>\u00a0with CBS and its subsidiary Columbia Records. At the time, the label was run by Walter Yetnikoff, a close associate and friend of Clive Davis \u2013\u2013 the man who would later become Sean Combs\u2019 second mentor after Harrell that is a later focus of this piece. Appointed by Paley, Yetnikoff is heavily implicated in the Payola scandals of the 1980s that involved the \u201cindependent promotion\u201d syndicate known as The Network, for which CBS Records was one of the biggest clients.xiii<\/sup>\u00a0Yetnikoff went to some ends to protect the established payola system, firing his deputy president Dick Asher in 1983 and, per UPI,\u00a0even quashing an investigation by the Recording Industry Association of America<\/a>. By 1986, CBS Records had come under the control of Laurence Tisch, the billionaire head of Loews Corporation and a founding member of the Leslie Wexner and Charles Bronfman-brokered \u201cMega Group.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harrell\u2019s success in management, contrary to music-making, seemed to have clarified things for Harrell, as his short-lived stint as a Profile Records artist came to a close when his high school rap duo with Alonzo Brown split up in 1986. That same year, Harrell struck out on his own to create Uptown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, before leaving Def Jam, Harrell\u00a0was responsible<\/a>\u00a0for Def Jam\u2019s hiring of Israeli-American Lyor \u201cLittle Lansky\u201d Cohen, who would later force out Def Jam co-founder Rick Rubin in order to co-run the label with Simmons. Years later, upon leaving Def Jam, Cohen would team up with the family who had taken control of Def Jam in the 1990s, the Bronfmans, to become the top executive at Warner Music, an event that will be revisited in Part II of this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not unlike Def Jam, Uptown\u2019s early success (and the furtherance of Harrell\u2019s career in the industry) was due to\u00a0its distribution deal<\/a>\u00a0with a major entertainment conglomerate. In Uptown\u2019s case, the company in question was the Music Corporation of American (MCA), an entertainment giant that dominated the American music and movie industry for many decades. Uptown\u2019s early distribution deal with MCA began in 1987 and soon expanded into a\u00a0formal partnership<\/a>\u00a0with the company a year later in 1988. Their ties grew even deeper in 1992, when MCA\u00a0offered Uptown<\/a>\u00a0a $50 million deal whereby Uptown expanded into film and television.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a\u00a0Vanity Fair<\/em>\u00a0obituary for Andre Harrell<\/a>, screenwriter and journalist Barry Michael Cooper describes an anecdote involving Harrell and a bust-up at the MCA Records Conference in Midtown Manhattan that demonstrates how Harrell employed street enforcers and drug dealers at Uptown, and that they even procured him a gun for protection:\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was a rumor going around the streets of New York that Teddy\u2019s manager, former drug dealer and karate enthusiast Gene Griffin, had smacked Andre in the conference of MCA Records in Midtown Manhattan. Journalist and author\u00a0Nelson George,<\/strong>\u00a0gave me Andre\u2019s telephone number, so I could confirm the story. I called Andre and identified myself, and asked him about the confrontation with Griffin. I also asked him about the story of two of his Uptown Record executives\u2014Jimmy \u201cLuv\u201d Jenkins and George Harrell (no relation), two of the most respected street dudes from the Highbridge neighborhood of the Bronx, and 116th Street in Harlem, respectively\u2014giving him a .45 automatic to keep for protection. Andre tried to place the gun in the back of his waistband. However, the .45 slipped through and down his pants, and landed on the floor of the elevator. Andre, Jimmy, and George jumped back, but the gun didn\u2019t discharge. Andre didn\u2019t respond for almost a minute, and then said to me, \u201cWho are you supposed to be? Ed Bradley? Things happen.\u201d We cracked up laughing, and became fast friends after that.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n In addition to MCA being critical to Harrell\u2019s career and MCA\u2019s success, Uptown\u2019s relationship with MCA also appears to align with one of Combs\u2019 earliest known sex crimes. For instance, one of the earliest allegations against Combs asserts that Combs sexually assaulted a victim after\u00a0an MCA event in New York in 1990 or 1991,<\/a>\u00a0a time when Combs was still an Uptown employee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As\u00a0Strictly Business\u00a0<\/em>scriptwriter Nelson George intimated in a Substack post eulogizing his friend Andre Harrell, Harrell was a known \u201cparty animal\u201d who frequently threw house parties in the \u201cwork space\/social club\/temporary housing\u201d that served as the nascent Uptown Records\u2019 offices. In fact, one of these parties in 1990 served as the source of inspiration for\u00a0Strictly Business<\/em>, the film that George co-wrote with Pam Gibson and which Andre Harrell executive produced for Island World Pictures (a company then affiliated with Polygram, which took\u00a0a significant stake<\/a>\u00a0in Def Jam in 1992). It was Harrell\u2019s role in the film that reportedly led MCA to enter into its $50 million multimedia deal with Uptown in 1992 that saw Harrell\u2019s company expand into film.\u00a0Strictly Business\u00a0<\/em>concerns a young mail room clerk setting up a black middle manager at a real estate firm with a club chick played by the emerging starlet Halle Berry. Bobby the mail clerk is a party boy with aspirations of graduating from the trainee broker program, and so he agrees to help Waymon navigate seducing the attractive woman in return for his higher-up\u2019s sponsorship of his candidacy. While the plot may seem like normal rom-com fare and relatively benign, when viewed within the context of the kinds of sexual quid pro quos that occur within the music industry and Harrell\u2019s close ties to figures like Combs, Simmons, and their broader social networks, it starts to take on a distinctly different slant. Speaking of sexual quid pro quos in the music industry and questionable label romances, Andre Harrell left an indelible influence on Combs\u2019 love life. He\u00a0hired Uptown R&B singer Al B. Sure\u2019s model girlfriend Kim Porter<\/a>\u00a0to work as a receptionist at the label. Combs\u2019 was immediately smitten with her, loving what he couldn\u2019t have. They would go on to have an on-and-off again relationship spanning the years from 1994 to 2018, the time of her mysterious death after contracting a virulent case of lobar pneumonia. We will return to Porter and Combs\u2019 ties to the modeling industry in Part III of this series.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Andre Harrell was also a consultant for the film\u00a0New Jack City<\/em>.\u00a0New Jack City\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>screenwriter Barry Michael Cooper recalls how he and producer George Jackson called his close friend Andre Harrell into Robert De Niro\u2019s Tribeca Productions compound to\u00a0watch the dailies from\u00a0New Jack City<\/em><\/a>\u00a0a week before production wrapped. Cooper and Jackson wanted to gauge Andre Harrell\u2019s reaction to\u00a0New Jack City\u2019<\/em>s narrative and the depictions of street life as it related to the crack epidemic<\/a>. Per Cooper\u2019s retelling, apparently Harrell raved and affectionately called the film \u201cThe Black Godfather.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n New Jack City\u2019s\u00a0<\/em>narrative revolves around a Harlem gang called the Cash Money Brothers who ascend to the top of the drug-dealing food chain in the borough once crack cocaine is introduced to the streets. The film featured gangster rap mainstay Ice-T in a prominent role and christened the careers of Wesley Snipes and Chris Rock, seeing a healthy return of nearly $50 million on a budget of $8 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n The controversial film was developed by Warner Brothers, which was then run by Steve Ross. Ross was able to build up his business empire, Kinney National Company (which later became Warner),\u00a0largely through his association<\/a>\u00a0with New York crime lords\u00a0Manny Kimmel and Abner \u201cLongy\u201d Zwillman<\/a>. Zwillman was a close associate of Meyer Lansky and Sam Bronfman. Ross, as a Warner executive, later frequented Robert Maxwell\u2019s yacht in the late 1980s, a time when Maxwell was deeply associated with a litany of organized crime figures across the globe. In addition, top Warner executives close to Ross personally\u00a0were convicted<\/a>\u00a0for their roles in a mob-tied racketeering scheme that was also allegedly involved Ross, though he somehow evaded charges.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n Considering his informal consultation on the film and the fact that Harrell had underwritten \u201cnew jack swing\u201d \u2014 Uptown\u2019s claim to fame and the genre from which the film took its name, which fused streetwise hip hop beats and melodic R&B for the first time \u2014 Harrell\u2019s influence over the\u00a0New Jack City\u00a0<\/em>production is clear. This is an important point, as it relates to mob-linked entertainment companies (in this case Warner Brothers) financing the glorification of drug dealing around 1991, a topic that we will return to in much greater detail near the end of this piece.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While MCA undoubtedly dominated much of American entertainment for decades, it was also deeply connected to organized crime and political power. In terms of MCA\u2019s political power, this arguably peaked under the Reagan administration, which boasted extremely close ties to the company. MCA even played a role in covert operations that brought together organized crime interests and intelligence agencies during this period.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The most iconic executive in MCA\u2019s history, Lew Wasserman, joined the company in 1936. By that point, Wasserman\u00a0had established<\/a>\u00a0longstanding, close ties to Jewish mobster and Meyer Lansky-associate Moe Dalitz, having allegedly initiated those ties by having first served as the publicist for the Dalitz-controlled Mayfair Casino. However, some sources contend that Wasserman had joined Dalitz\u2019s Mayfield Road Gang before working at the Mayfair. Wasserman later married the daughter of Dalitz\u2019s long-time lawyer Henry Beckerman, who he had first met through his work at the casino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Wasserman and MCA were also the forces chiefly responsible for the political career of former president Ronald Reagan. Reagan, previously an actor before becoming a politician, had been represented by MCA since 1940. Soon after, he became Wasserman\u2019s first \u201cmillion dollar client.\u201d Wasserman later engineered Reagan\u2019s campaign to lead the Screen Actors Guild, where Reagan made significant policy changes designed to give MCA an edge over other entertainment companies. Wasserman and other top MCA executives, such as Taft Schreiber and Jules Stein, played an intimate role in Reagan\u2019s successful gubernatorial bid, as well as financing his later campaign for president of the United States. When Reagan was president, his Attorney General Edwin Meese notably quashed what had been an ongoing investigation into MCA\u2019s organized crime ties. Meese later resigned following his involvement in the Bronx-based Wedtech scandal (see end note vi).<\/p>\n\n\n\n That probe was initiated when evidence was found that MCA was engaged in business relations with the Gambino crime family. More specifically, MCA\u00a0had hired<\/a>\u00a0a high-ranking Gambino associate, Salvatore Pisello, as an official representative of the company, even though Pisello had no experience in the music or movie business. At the time Pisello was\u00a0doing business<\/a>\u00a0with MCA, he was also\u00a0simultaneously a partner\u00a0<\/a>of Morris Levy, the Genovese family-linked record executive behind Roulette Records who financed the early hip hop label Sugar Hill. Levy\u2019s connection to Andre Harrell\u2019s early employer WINS was noted earlier in this article.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MCA kept Pisello around even though they\u00a0lost money<\/a>\u00a0on every deal where Pisello had represented them and continued to work with him after his mob ties became publicly known. This was done at the behest of Wasserman, then chairman of the board of MCA, and Sidney Sheinberg, then president of MCA Inc.,\u00a0despite protests\u00a0<\/a>from other board members. One of the main MCA executives that had been closely involved with the company\u2019s Pisello dealings, Irving Azoff, was subsequently promoted to become head of MCA\u2019s Music Entertainment Division, the division that \u2013\u2013 shortly thereafter \u2013\u2013 entered into a distribution agreement with Andre Harrell\u2019s Uptown Records. Azoff has\u00a0long publicly praised<\/a>\u00a0Harrell and\u00a0later eulogized<\/a>\u00a0him at his 2020 funeral.\u00a0Irving Azoff was also Combs\u2019 neighbor<\/a>\u00a0in the exclusive Beverly Hills enclave known as \u201cBillionaires\u2019 Row\u201d up until Combs put the $60 million estate on the market in September 2024, not long after DHS raided the property.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shuttered federal investigation into MCA also turned up evidence that the company was tied to the Genovese crime family. As noted earlier, the Genovese crime family\u00a0had also been linked<\/a>\u00a0to Morris Levy (Levy was\u00a0also involved<\/a>\u00a0with some of Pisello\u2019s dealings with MCA). In addition, during this same period,\u00a0the mob-style murder<\/a>\u00a0of retail billionaire Leslie Wexner\u2019s then-tax attorney, Arthur Shapiro, led Columbus police investigators to link both Shapiro\u2019s death and Wexner himself to Genovese criminal interests. Shortly after Shapiro\u2019s death, Jeffrey Epstein entered into Wexner\u2019s inner circle, \u201ctasked with getting [Wexner\u2019s] finances in order<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![](\"https:\/\/www.activistpost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Ad-Black-99-Macroaggressions.png\"\/)
<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\nA Bad Boy from Birth<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Moving Uptown<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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Uptown\u2019s Secret to Success: Andre Harrell & MCA\u00a0<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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MCA: Mob Corporation of America<\/strong><\/h4>\n\n\n\n
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