Shyne was a star on the Bad Boy roster until a shooting in 1999 at a nightclub in NYC put his rap career on hold indefinitely. Shyne was sentenced to a decade in prison, though served time between 2001 to 2009. His relationship with Diddy became strained during that time but in his recent interview with the Drink Champs, he explained how he got over the “bitterness” he felt towards his former boss.
Danny Martindale/FilmMagic/Getty Images
“What happened with Diddy, with Brother Love, I don’t really blame that on him now as much as I did then,” Shyne admitted, adding that he went through a stage of “bitterness.” However, he said that it was Diddy’s lawyers who were to blame in the situation, more so than Diddy himself. “In retrospect, I blame it more on the lawyers that were advising him. Because his lawyers were there to secure a ‘not guilty’ verdict by any means,” he added.
“He’s a corporation — a $100 million corporation and, you know, they looked at me as the enemy,” he said, recalling that Diddy was still quite young at the time. He also explained that he had came from the streets while Puff already had established himself as a musician. Shyne acknowledged that the stakes were much higher for Diddy at the time, too.
“He’s about to lose everything. I’m about to lose everything. I’m from that, though. Diddy is a musician, but he wasn’t from that,” he said. “So his response shouldn’t be expected to be my response. When your lawyers are misleading you and misguiding you, that’s how everything fell apart. And he said that to me. He said, ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have never listened to those lawyers.’ I forgave him. It was traumatic. I would forgive him and then you might hear me a few months later going in on him. That was over a decade ago and I was in a different space then.”
Shyne also revealed that Diddy extended a helping hand during his political campaign in Belize. “Diddy lost it when he heard that,” Shyne said. “He got the REVOLT people involved, he got the publicists, he got his legislative friends. He said, ‘We can’t let this happen.’ Puff, to me, totally redeemed himself.”
Check out the full interview below. Shyne talks Diddy around the 39:00 mark.