What Diddy's Exes Have Said About Him

The following article includes mentions of sexual assault, domestic violence, and substance abuse.

Sean "Diddy" Combs wants fans to believe he's all about love; the four-letter word is even part of Diddy's name after his latest rebrand. But this amorous addition came before Diddy was hit with explosive allegations that he sexually abused multiple people — and one of his exes is among those who took legal action against him.

The accuser, Cassie, is one of a handful of famous women Diddy has dated since becoming one of hip-hop's most dominant players. To hear the Bad Boy Records mogul tell it, he's a tragic figure who just wants to find lasting love. In his 2002 song "I Need a Girl (Part One)," Diddy ever-so-romantically raps, "I got it all, but I really need a wife at home ... never spend the night alone/I got a few you would like to bone." He also has nothing but love for his exes. In a since-deleted Instagram post, he begged Cassie to listen to the Michael Jackson song "The Lady in My Life" on repeat after their 2018 breakup. He used the same song in a video tribute to his late ex, Kim Porter, in 2020, adding a declaration of love for her in the caption of that post. "It really felt like the pure definition of unconditional love, but it was a little deeper than that," he said of his relationship with Porter on the "Yes, Girl!" podcast.

Cassie's 2023 lawsuit was followed in September 2024 by his arrest. Suddenly, one of music's biggest moguls was hit with federal charges of sex trafficking. When his trial began in May 2025, revealing even more shocking allegations, it's unnerving to look back at what Diddy's exes have said about him.

Misa Hylton is a renowned stylist who has worked her wardrobe magic on hip-hop legends including Lil' Kim and Mary J. Blige. She was a 17-year-old high schooler when she launched her career with some help from her then-boyfriend Diddy, who was five years her senior. Hylton told BET that Diddy asked her to style the band Jodeci after he got a big promotion at Uptown Records from intern to talent director. "I would finish high school early. I would get out probably about noon and I would just sit at Uptown Records," Hylton recalled. She was 19 when she and Diddy welcomed their son Justin Combs. By the following year, Diddy was dating Kim Porter.

Hylton and Diddy's co-parenting relationship hit a snag in 2023 when Justin got arrested for a DUI. On her Instagram Story, Hylton seemingly suggested that Diddy was setting a bad example for their son. "The statement 'a fish rots from the head down' means that, in addition to being a major contributing factor in a family or organization's success, leadership is also the root cause of its failure and demise," she wrote. Without referring to him by name, Hylton also took a swipe at Diddy's relationship with the liquor company Diageo. "How [do] you go from one of the greatest to ever do it to making all your money off alcohol," read another message from the peeved parent.

During a 2010 Power 105 interview (via Sandra Rose), Misa Hylton revealed that Diddy cheated on her with her former friend Kim Porter and his friend Sarah Chapman before fathering children with both women. "I joke around sometimes and say, 'They are like my sister-wives,'" she shared.

Hylton suggested that it irritated Diddy that she didn't want to have a sexual relationship with him after their split, which is why he paid more child support to Porter. "He still is bitter. ... When you can have everything sometimes and you can't have that one little thing, you are not used to that," she said. Hylton had previously spoken to the New York Post about the discrepancy in child support payments in 2004. She was receiving monthly payments of $5,512, while Diddy was sending $30,000 to Porter each month. At the time, Diddy and Porter had just one child and had recently reconciled after their 1999 breakup. Hylton said it was unfortunate that she had to take her ex to court and suggested it was not a good look for him. "The perception Sean projects outside the courtroom is quite different from the truth," she said. "He wants the public to have a perception of him, but the reality is that I'm here asking for money."

One of the topics discussed during Kim Porter and Diddy's joint 2006 Essence interview was Diddy's relationship with Jennifer Lopez. While Diddy was making everyone gawk by stepping out with Jenny from the Block in 1999, Porter was busy caring for the son she and Diddy had recently welcomed. On "Behind the Music," Diddy admitted that he fell for Lopez while they were rehearsing a sensual dancing scene for his 1997 "Been Around the World" music video.

Porter was understandably devastated and sent Diddy packing. However, after Lopez extinguished her fiery romance with the rapper, Porter took him back. "That relationship wasn't real. ... He was still in love with me," she explained to Essence. Less than a year later, she'd be speaking to the magazine again about kicking Diddy to the curb — this time for good. He'd been unfaithful again but done a better job hiding his liaison with Sarah Chapman. In fact, Chapman and Diddy had already welcomed their daughter, Chance, by the time Porter — who was pregnant with twins D'Lila and Jessie — learned about the affair from a friend. She didn't immediately confront Diddy, who eventually found the courage to confess that he had failed her as a partner again. "I was like, 'Dude, this is so wack I can't even respect you right now,'" Porter recalled (via People). "And for me, once the respect is gone, I'm not even listening to you."

Although he didn't always treat her like he thought the world of her, Diddy reacted to Kim Porter's 2018 death by proclaiming that he and his ex "were more than soulmates" in a since-deleted Instagram post. Porter didn't go this far in the final Instagram post she shared about Diddy, but she had nothing but glowing praise for the hip-hop impresario. In honor of Diddy's birthday, which he celebrated less than two weeks before Porter died, the late model wrote, "On this day a GENIUS was born, may you continue to be the Driving Force of ENERGY that GOD created you to be!!"

When the exes called it quits for good in 2007, Porter told Essence that she wasn't just committed to having an amicable co-parenting relationship with Diddy. "Sean and I have this bond, this friendship. It's not about 'if you're faithful to me, if I'm being faithful to you.' We're friends," she said. If Porter had experienced any bouts of anger and bitterness over Diddy's infidelity, it seems that she was capable of quickly casting those feelings aside. She even revealed that she and Diddy were still speaking to each other daily.

That Jennifer Lopez and Diddy made headlines for being arrested early on in their relationship did not bode well for the couple. But charges against JLo were swiftly dropped and Diddy was later acquitted over his alleged involvement in a 1999 shooting at a Manhattan nightclub. Lopez's revealing palm frond dress also helped erase that unfortunate incident from everyone's minds.

Lopez stuck it out with Diddy until early 2001. She told Vibe that his late-night outings without her were beginning to make her worry that he wasn't someone she'd want to have children with. Plus, Lopez warns potential suitors that she does not abide cheating in her song "If You Had My Love," and she believes that Diddy was disregarding that dealbreaker. "It was the first time I was with someone who wasn't faithful ... I was totally crying, crazy and going nuts, it really took my whole life in a tailspin," she told Vibe in 2003 (via Entertainment Weekly).

While Lopez discovered that Diddy was not relationship material, there was one upside to dating him. "He was meant to be in my life at that moment to teach me what I needed to know about the music business," she said in a 2019 "CBS Sunday Morning" interview.

Before Jennifer Lopez completely erased Alex Rodriguez from her life, thus allowing for the second coming of Bennifer to happen, Diddy showed his ex a little love on the 'gram. In 2019, the "I'll Be Missing You" hitmaker made fans wonder if he was missing Lopez when he reacted to a photo of the "On The Floor" singer posing in a bikini top. To let Lopez know that his jaw was on the floor, Diddy typed the letters "OMG." On "The Breakfast Club," Lopez revealed that Diddy later reached out to Rodriguez to assure the former MLB player that he meant no disrespect by expressing his admiration for Lopez's ageless looks. Lopez also seemed cool with the brief comment. "We were together so many years ago, it's just like we were kids," she said.

The exes were still on excellent terms as of 2020 when Diddy hosted a virtual dance-a-thon during the pandemic's early days. Lopez and Rodriguez both participated in the fundraiser, and Lopez told Diddy that Rodriguez was a huge fan of his. The trio then danced together to Diddy's "Been Around the World (Remix)." Lopez and Diddy also got their groove on to Elvis Crespo's "Suavemante." After seeing Diddy swivel his hips, Lopez exclaimed, "I probably taught you that!"

After Diddy was arrested and charged with sex trafficking, some remarks that Jennifer Lopez made about two decades earlier resurfaced. A clip of Lopez being interviewed by Diane Sawyer for "Primetime" shortly after their breakup was posted on Instagram, raising far more questions than it had at the time. 

Asked whether she'd been afraid of Diddy during their relationship, Lopez insisted that she hadn't. She did, however, allude to why things didn't work out between them, explaining that they "didn't have the same kind of ideals about life and family and stuff like that" (via the Daily Mail). Lopez also stated that the problems between them had more to do with her than him. "It just wasn't a good relationship for me," she admitted.

Then, however, Lopez made a statement that, in light of the allegations that were subsequently made about Diddy, could be interpreted as an indication that he was up to similar shenanigans during their relationship. "I had to learn to care about myself a little bit more and put up certain boundaries of what I would accept and wouldn't accept because really he was just being himself," she said.

Gina Huynh was one of the first women to accuse Diddy of abusive behavior. In a 2019 conversation with vlogger Tasha K, Huynh recounted how she caught Diddy's eye in 2014 when she was invited to a party at his house. As she was leaving, he got her phone number. Huynh claimed that she started seeing Diddy while he was still dating Cassie — and he didn't let her forget that he had an official girlfriend. "He would always compare me to Cassie and tell me that I'm the bad one and she's a good one," she recalled.

Huynh said that Diddy was manipulative, cruel, and jealous. She alleged that he got enraged when she shook Meek Mills' hand at the "Dreams and Nightmares" singer's birthday party. However, he waited until they got inside his Escalade before acting on his anger. "He like grabbed my hair and like cussed me out," she said. According to Huynh, Diddy's behavior got worse when they arrived at their hotel; she alleged that he pushed his hand against her face so hard that he gave her a nosebleed. Huynh said he had another jealous fit when he learned that she was texting a male friend. "He stomped on my stomach really hard ... I couldn't breathe," she recalled, adding that Diddy also started striking her in the head.

Gina Huynh told Tasha K that she had two abortions while she was romantically involved with Diddy. She claimed that he offered her $50,000 to abort the first pregnancy, but she refused the money. When she got pregnant a second time, Huynh was more hesitant to get an abortion and told Diddy she needed time to decide whether she wanted to go through with it. However, she accused him of pressuring her to undergo the procedure. When she did, it wounded her deeply that Diddy wasn't there for her; he had decided to go to Burning Man, and she couldn't even reach him via phone. "I was just at home by myself, just f***ed up in my head, and he didn't even care," an emotional Huynh recalled.

The model caused a stir in May 2022 when she attended the Billboard Awards and referred to Diddy as "baby daddy" in a post on her Instagram Story. When she spoke to The Jasmine Brand the following month, she made no mention of her outrageous allegations about Diddy. Instead, Huynh praised the performer and revealed that she considered him a friend. "He did bless me in a lot of ways and I'm always going to be forever grateful and respect him," she said.

Diddy confirmed that he was dating Caresha "Yung Miami" Brownlee in 2022 during an appearance on his girlfriend's podcast, "Caresha Please." However, Diddy added a wrinkle to their relationship status by also describing himself as single — and welcoming a child with another woman. After he and cybersecurity professional Dana Tran celebrated the birth of Love Sean Combs that December, Diddy took to X (formerly known as Twitter) to assure his fans that Yung Miami was no "side chick."

Whatever was going on between the "Bad Boy for Life" singer and the City Girls member, it seemed to be over by April 2023. When asked about the status of her situationship with Diddy, Yung Miami told The Cut, "We're still good friends! But we're single. That's not my man." The pair did, however, attend the Met Gala together the following month. At the event, La La Anthony pressed the pair to share whether they were dating. "It's just a good date night," Yung Miami said, while Diddy described his date as "my best friend in the world." He also began sweating profusely during the interview.

In July 2023, Yung Miami shared another update on her love life. From the sound of it, she was tired of having an ill-defined relationship. "I'm ready to be in a relationship & love again!" she tweeted. "This was my last summer being outside!"

During a January 2023 episode of "Caresha Please," Yung Miami made a candid confession about a kink of hers: She likes being urinated on in the shower. It's rare for a celeb to speak so openly about a fetish, so word of Yung Miami's revelation quickly spread on the internet — and soon "Pee Diddy" became a trending topic on X. However, Yung Miami later pointed out to The Cut, "I never said he was the one I did that with."

Yung Miami found herself addressing far more serious allegations after music producer Rodney "Lil Rod" Jones Jr. filed a civil lawsuit against Diddy in 2024. Per XXL, Jones claimed that Diddy had employed Yung Miami and other women as sex workers. Jones further alleged that Yung Miami had trafficked a drug known as "pink cocaine" for Diddy. Yung Miami addressed Jones' claims on X in response to someone who tweeted about her receiving $250,000, an amount referenced in the lawsuit, for her alleged services. "Something the internet made up and yall ran with it!!! N***as don't even pay that for child support why tf would a n***a ever pay me 250k for. FOR WHAT??" she wrote. A source also told Us Weekly that Yung Miami had evidence disproving the drug claim.

Cassie was 19 years old when Diddy signed her to his record label, and soon she was dating her boss. In 2016, sources told TMZ that Cassie had tried to dump Diddy, only for him to flee with her phone because he reportedly suspected her of cheating on him. The cops got involved when Cassie's mother became concerned enough to call them, but no charges were filed — and Cassie didn't succeed in leaving Diddy.

Two years later, Cassie ditched Diddy for good. LoveBScott claimed that she was unhappy because the rapper had been spotted with two other women, models Jocelyn Chew and Gina Huynh. Cassie raised a few eyebrows when she wrote the words "F*** these h***" on her Instagram Story not long after the breakup. However, she showed Diddy some love one month later with another post reading, "Happy Birthday, King!"

Cassie remained tight-lipped about her relationship with Diddy for many years after their breakup. However, in a 2019 Instagram post, she did reveal that there was a time when she wasn't in the best frame of mind while dating him. The post included an image of Cassie sitting in a window seat and smoking as she gazed outside. "This photo was of me in NY on May 31st, 2017," she wrote. "I feel sad for the girl in the picture because I know the personal demons she was battling."

In a 2023 civil complaint, Cassie alleges that Diddy signed her to Bad Boy Records and immediately took advantage of their professional relationship to pursue her romantically, even though she was dating someone else. She claims that Diddy kissed her without her consent, and she soon started to worry that spurning his advances would be detrimental to her career.

According to Cassie, Diddy was manipulative and controlling. She claims that he pushed drugs on her to make her more compliant, such as when he allegedly made her have sex with male prostitutes while he watched and filmed the encounters. Cassie further alleges that Diddy subjected her to horrific physical and sexual abuse. "Mr. Combs would violently beat Ms. Ventura, leaving bruises on her body," the complaint reads. Cassie explains that this behavior made her terrified to refuse any of Diddy's demands, but she eventually found the strength to end their relationship. On the night she planned to do so, she claims that Diddy raped her. When she filed her lawsuit, Cassie said in a statement, "After years in silence and darkness, I am finally ready to tell my story."

Cassie's lawsuit and the explosive allegations contained within proved problematic for Diddy. Yet the day after she filed it, she dropped the suit entirely, concluding the matter with a cash settlement; at the time, the sum was undisclosed.

When Diddy went to court to defend himself against federal charges of sex trafficking, Cassie was no longer just his embittered ex — she was now a witness for the prosecution. Testifying against him, she confirmed that she'd dropped her 2023 lawsuit and revealed how much he'd paid her to do so: $20 million. As she explained, prior to suing him, she'd written a draft manuscript of a tell-all book that included all the allegations laid out in her suit. She told the court that her lawyer reached out to Diddy and encouraged him to read it. A valuation of $30 million was placed on the book if Diddy wanted to acquire the rights to prevent it from being published and having his alleged secrets exposed. When he didn't respond, she felt her only recourse was to sue. Once he'd read the manuscript, Diddy apparently felt his best option was to pay $20 million to shut it down.

During the testimony, Cassie insisted she would return every penny in exchange for not having to participate in Diddy's "freak offs," the sex orgies he allegedly forced her to participate in. "I'd give that money back if I never had to have 'freak off,'" she said, as reported by Fox 5 New York. "If I never had to have 'freak offs,' I would have had agency and autonomy and I wouldn't have had to work so hard to get it back."

When testifying as a witness for the prosecution during Diddy's trial, Cassie's testimony proved to be explosive. She went into graphic detail when alleging that Combs forced her to participate in those "freak offs," in which she'd perform sex acts with others while he watched, for hours — and sometimes even days — on end. "It basically entails the hiring of an escort and setting up this experience so that I could perform for Sean," she testified, reported The Guardian. The goal, she explained, was for him "to watch me with the other person and actually direct us on what we were doing. Eventually it became a job for me, pretty much."

According to Cassie, participating in those "freak offs" was mentally destabilizing, and eroded her self-esteem. Afterward, she felt "horrible," "humiliated," and "worthless," adding that "It felt like all I was good for ... I was an object. I was heavily objectified." At the same time, she was on the receiving end of an endless cycle of domestic violence. She testified that "there were violent arguments" throughout the relationship, which would "usually result in some sort of physical abuse."

A common question arose: why didn't she exit what she'd categorized as an abusive, sexually exploitative relationship? Cassie, however, explained that Diddy wielded an immense amount of power over her, enough to make or break her. "I feared for my career, my family ..." she said, via The Guardian. "I felt trapped. Whatever was going to not make him angry or threaten me I was going to do."

While testifying at Diddy's sex trafficking trial, Cassie dropped another bombshell when she claimed that he was heavily using opioids and painkillers during the course of their relationship. "I would say he's an addict," she said in court while under oath, as reported by MSNBC. 

Cassie claimed that Diddy indulged in opioids on a daily basis and that he would wrangle doctors' prescriptions for the drugs "in anybody's name ... whoever's name hadn't been used a lot," she said, via USA Today. She also admitted that she and Diddy would get high together and also became addicted to opioids. During their relationship, she alleged that she and Diddy made numerous attempts — estimating the number at five or six — to kick their habits with professional help. Whenever he did attempt to wean himself off the drugs, however, she claimed that he'd become "irritated" when going through withdrawal.

She also revealed that Diddy took so many painkillers while attending a 2012 party at the Playboy Mansion that he overdosed. She wasn't with him at the time but wound up rushing him to a hospital to seek medical attention. 

In May 2024, a disturbing closed-circuit video emerged. Taken in a hotel, the video features Diddy, clad in just a towel, running down a hallway. When he arrived at the elevator, he encountered Cassie, who was waiting for the elevator. He can be seen grabbing her roughly and fiercely throwing her to the ground. After kicking her a few times, he then dragged her back to the hotel room. Diddy subsequently issued a since-deleted Instagram video in which he apologized for his violence toward Cassie. "It's so difficult to reflect on the darkest times in your life, but sometimes you got to do that," he said (via NPR). "I was f***ed up — I mean, I hit rock bottom — but I make no excuses."

While testifying at Diddy's trial, Cassie was confronted with that video and claimed that it was far from an isolated incident. As MSNBC reported, when prosecutors asked her to recount how many times she'd been similarly hurled to the floor by Diddy during the course of their relationship, she grimly responded, "Too many to count."

If you or anyone you know needs help with rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, or substance abuse, contact the relevant resources below:

• The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
• The National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.
• The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration website or contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357).