In February 2011, a 16-year-old Justin Bieber was nearing the height of his fame when he sat down with one of his key musical role models on national television.
Their closeness was evident. Bieber playfully copied his mentor’s every move on the interview couch, aping his hand gestures and speech, and even mimicking the way he crossed his legs.
It was so striking that show host Jimmy Kimmel said to his older interviewee: ‘Do you see what an impression you’re making on the young man? I hope you’re going to be a good role model to him… what’s going on with you guys?’
‘I think we’ve become friends in a strange way,’ came the reply.
But of course, that seemingly innocent interaction has now taken on a sinister new meaning, for the man who was sat with Bieber was Sean ‘Diddy‘ Combs, then aged 41.
In February 2011, a 16-year-old Justin Bieber was nearing the height of his fame when he sat down with one of his key musical role models on national TV.
Their closeness was evident. Bieber playfully copied his mentor’s every move on the interview couch, aping his hand gestures and speech, and even mimicking the way he crossed his legs.
But of course, that seemingly innocent interaction has now taken on a sinister new meaning, for the man who was sat with Bieber was Sean ‘ Diddy ‘ Combs. They are pictured here in 2014.
On September 16 this year, the rapper was arrested in New York City and charged with a set of jaw-dropping crimes ranging from alleged sex trafficking to racketeering and transportation for the purposes of prostitution.
Now as Combs, 54, awaits trial and prosecutors have spoken to over 50 witnesses and victims, who they say will expose the utter depravity of his ‘criminal enterprise’, questions have been raised over why those responsible for Bieber allowed Diddy to become something of a mentor to him as a child.
Sources close to Bieber, 30, exclusively told the Daily Mail that he ‘should never have been allowed to party with Diddy or anyone else when he was a teen.’
They claim he was ‘thrown to the wolves’ by his mother Pattie Mallette and largely absent father Jeremy Bieber.
Usher, whose record label Bieber was signed to, and who was himself mentored by Diddy as a teen, is also partly responsible, these sources claim.
There is no evidence to suggest Bieber’s parents or Usher knew about Diddy’s alleged criminal activity at the time.
In that 2011 interview, Kimmel asked Bieber what they got up to when they hung out as friends, Combs interjected, saying, ‘he knows better than to be talking about the things he does with big brother Puff on national television. Everything ain’t for everybody.’
Insiders say Bieber was ‘thrown to the wolves’ by his mother Pattie Mallette (left) and largely absent father Jeremy Bieber, who both ‘stepped aside and turned a blind eye to all of it’.
Usher, whose record label Bieber was signed to, and who was himself mentored by Diddy as a teen, is also partly responsible, these sources say.
Today, the resulting information vacuum surrounding their relationship, and Bieber’s refusal to comment on the growing allegations against Combs, has sent his fans into a frenzy, disinterring old video footage of the pair together and speculating wildly over any potential meaning.
Of particular note:
A 2010 clip in which Combs jokingly grills Bieber, then 16, over why he hasn’t ‘been calling me and hanging out the way we used to hang out.’
And a bizarre 2021 clip, in which Combs appears to pat Bieber down, as if to check whether he is wearing a wire, before Bieber tells him ‘I love you’ and they say goodbye.
Fans have also started re-examining Bieber’s old song lyrics in an attempt to glean any clues about his relationship with Diddy.
Bieber’s 2020 song ‘Lonely’ – which he has said is about the ‘tough chapters’ he experienced as a child star – has been circulated online with particular focus on a verse that reads: ‘And everybody saw me sick/And it felt like no one gave a s**t/ They criticized the things I did as an idiot kid.’
As recently as August last year, Bieber featured on Diddy’s album (‘The Love Album’), with Bieber taking to Instagram and writing to his ‘brother’: ‘Wild full circle, love you.’
The pair struck up their unlikely friendship at the 2009 VMAs, when Bieber was a 15-year-old baby-faced breakout star, discovered the year prior on YouTube by talent-manager Scooter Braun, and Combs was a 40-year-old mogul already worth millions of dollars.
Bieber had just been signed by Usher in 2008 who himself lived with Diddy when he was a young artist.
Usher has since expressed reservations about Diddy’s mentorship, saying the rapper introduced him to sex, drugs and alcohol when he was far too young and telling MTV in 2010 that he ‘wouldn’t pass on any of the advice he gave me.’
In 2016, Usher went a step further. When asked in an interview with Howard Stern if he would send his own child to live with Diddy, he replied ‘Hell no!’
Sources close to Bieber said that he ‘should never have been allowed to party with Diddy or anyone else when he was a teen.’ He is pictured here with Pattie (left) and wife Hailey (right).
In November 2009, a 15-year-old Bieber spent a now-infamous 48-hour period with Diddy seemingly unsupervised at the rapper’s home.
In a video taken during that time and shared to YouTube by Bieber, Diddy, then 40, turns to the camera and says: ‘He’s having 48 hours with Diddy, where we hanging out [sic] and what we’re doing we can’t really disclose.
‘But it’s definitely a 15-year-old’s dream. We’re gonna go full, buck full crazy.’
In 2009, Combs ceased hosting his famous ‘White Parties’ for A-list friends and allegedly ramped up his seedier, notorious ‘Freak-Offs’ at which many of the crimes listed in the New York indictment are said to have taken place.
Prosecutors say over the course of ‘decades’ Combs enlisted legions of employees and prostitutes to stage elaborate, sometimes days-long, twisted displays at these ‘Freak-Off’ orgies, at which women were given drugs and forced into sexual acts with male sex workers.
Combs allegedly used ‘physical, emotional, and verbal abuse,’ to force women to comply, threatened them with firearms, or ‘hit, kicked, threw objects at, and dragged victims, at times, by their hair’.
He allegedly filmed the encounters and sometimes watched while masturbating.
During a March raid on Combs’s LA and Miami homes, investigators found over 1,000 bottles of lubricant and baby oil.
Some of these ‘Freak-Offs’ allegedly went on so long that exhausted participants had to be given restorative IV drips, while others were left with serious injuries and teams were brought in to clean away the mess.
On Tuesday, Texas lawyer Tony Buzbee revealed he is representing a further 120 alleged victims, 25 of whom were underage when they claim Diddy sexually abused them, typically drugging them with tranquilizers. At least one was reportedly a nine-year-old boy.
While there is no evidence that Bieber was ever at one of Diddy’s ‘Freak-Offs’ or ‘White Parties’, he certainly partied with the rapper during his youth.
In 2014, Khloe Kardashian recalled seeing Bieber at a recent event where ‘half the people there were butt-naked’. In February the same year, he appeared at the launch party for Combs’s drink brand, DeLeon, and was pictured topless.
Combs and Bieber struck up a friendship at the 2009 VMAs, when Bieber, 15, was a breakout star, discovered the year prior by manager Scooter Braun (Pictured here in 2013 with Usher).
The following year the pair danced together at the 21st birthday party of Combs’s son – also called Justin – and then, two months later, they both appeared on stage during a Miami music festival.
All the while, Bieber seemed to be deteriorating.
In January 2014, he had been stopped by police after racing a Lamborghini in a 30mph zone. He accepted a plea deal for careless driving.
A month later, police found marijuana in his limo – no charges were filed.
In July, he was charged with vandalism and ordered to pay a neighbor $80,900 after he egged their house.
Meanwhile, at home, troubles abounded.
In 2015, Bieber told Billboard that his relationship with his mother was ‘pretty non-existent’, adding: ‘I was distant because I was ashamed. I never wanted my mom to be disappointed in me and I knew she was. We spent some time not talking.’
Bieber’s mother, Pattie, had Justin when she was 18, raising him mostly alone after splitting from his father, Jeremy, a few months after he was born.
She suffered her own issues with drugs and addiction in the years before giving birth, revealing in a 2008 interview that she had turned to drugs to ‘numb the pain’ of childhood sexual abuse, and had once attempted suicide.
‘I was pretty much high or drunk from the time I woke up, to the time I went to bed,’ she said.
Jeremy was absent for much of Bieber’s childhood, once leaving for an entire year when Justin was four. The pair later worked to rebuild their relationship, however, with Bieber telling GQ in 2016 that he was now ‘a lot closer to my dad than I am to my mom’.
In January 2014, Bieber had been stopped by police after racing a Lamborghini in a 30mph zone. He accepted a plea deal for careless driving.
During the time he was hanging out with Bieber, Combs was allegedly hosting his society event White Parties and seedier, notorious ‘Freak-Offs’.
The extent of Bieber’s drug use in his teens only became clear in recent years, with the singer being more candid about his addiction struggles. He is pictured here last week.
The extent of Bieber’s drug use in his teens only became clear in recent years, with the singer being more candid about his addiction struggles, including admitting he started smoking marijuana aged 12 before going on to abuse pills and alcohol.
‘My security would come into my room at night to check my pulse,’ he said in a 2020 documentary. ‘People don’t know how serious it got. It was legit crazy scary.’
In another interview, reflecting on the impact of child pop-stardom, he said he wanted to protect Billie Eilish – who was shooting to global fame at the time – from the experiences he had had.
Wiping away tears, he said: ‘I don’t want her to go through anything I went through. I don’t wish that upon anybody.’
Representatives for Bieber, his parents, Usher and Combs did not respond to requests for comment.
But now, as fresh concerns over Bieber’s health proliferate – with pictures emerging in recent days of the star, who became a father in August, looking particularly gaunt – fans are questioning if the news of Combs’s alleged crimes is to blame.