The fallout from the new lawsuit against Sean “Diddy” Combs continues. The discourse has predictably — perhaps inevitably — gone downhill as the focus shifted from the allegations of Combs’ inappropriate, bullying behavior to (sigh) beef between rapper Meek Mill and internet personality DJ Akademiks over gay rumors now circulating as a result of Meek Mill being mentioned in the lawsuit. Here’s a rundown of why Meek and Akademiks have been arguing on Twitter.
Why Was Meek Mill Mentioned In The New Diddy Lawsuit?
As pointed out earlier today, the lawsuit, filed by one of Diddy’s Off The Grid producers, Rodney “Lil Rod Madeit” Jones, claims that Combs boasted to Jones he had sexual intercourse with other entertainers, whose names were redacted.
DJ Akademiks, in reading the suit for his fans (shame on them) on social media, used the provided footnotes to determine that they were most likely Usher and Meek Mill. Naturally (sigh), as this report spread on social media, it kicked up the well-tread, utterly exhausting tendency of a certain segment of users to fixate on the alleged participants’ sexualities rather than, you know, anything Diddy did that might have been illegal or harmful.
Meek, upon discovering the rumors flying online, logged in to try to regain control of the narrative — rookie move. His insistence that some identified “they” were doing “damage control” (does he know what these words mean?) only drew more attention to the buzzing rumors, while his indirect threats toward Akademiks brought the man (slash “mouse”) himself to Meek’s digital doorstep. You can see a truncated version of the exchange below.
An important thing to remember in this situation is that anybody can say anything in a lawsuit. The point is to get attention and generate buzz around it, so plaintiffs’ attorneys will often make sure to put the most inflammatory allegations in the news cycle, hoping to embarrass the defendant into a quick settlement (as happened with Cassie’s lawsuit against Diddy, which kicked off the last several months worth of legal actions against the music impresario). Diddy has maintained his settlement with Cassie was not an admission of guilt, while decrying the new lawsuits as nothing but “money grabs.”
If Diddy really did engage in illegal or inappropriate behavior, he should be held accountable for it. Past that, the rest is nobody’s business. The main takeaway here is that the world really would be better off if we all stopped paying attention to DJ Akademiks.
Some artists covered here are Warner Music artists. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.
(@nojumper)
(@FreddieGibbs)