What does it take for a musical artist to have three Grammys to his credit? Well, the American rapper P Diddy has achieved that since his activity kicked off in the industry in 1990. He is not only a rapper but also a singer and a songwriter as well as a record producer and an entrepreneur. Of course, these are the sources from which the artist has made his money. So, while P Diddy’s net worth has recently been placed at $740 million, let’s know how he achieved this much in less than 3 decades and how he spends his millions.
How P Diddy Achieved His Net Worth
He was originally named Sean John Combs following the event of his birth which occurred on November 4, 1969. While he was born in Manhattan, New York City, much of his upbringing took place in Mount Vernon, a city in Westchester County, also in New York.
Diddy’s father (Melvin Earl Combs) was a soldier with the US Airforce while his mother Janice Combs (nee Smalls) was a model in her younger days but later transformed into a teacher’s assistant.
Talking about how P Diddy achieved his net worth, he started his business career by delivering newspapers at the age of 12. Then, according to available records, he later attended Mount Saint Michael Academy, an all-boys high school run by the Catholic Arch-Diocese of New York in Wakefield, the Bronx. After that, he wanted to indulge his childhood business acumen by pursuing a college degree in business. So, he enrolled at Howard University, Washington DC but later dropped out after his sophomore year.
First of all, note that P Diddy’s net worth has dropped from over $850 million owing to a couple of business challenges his companies faced recently.
After he dropped out of college, he began his professional career by working as an intern at New-York-based Uptown Records. He quickly rose to become Uptown Record’s talent director, a position that afforded him the opportunity of helping to develop now-veteran artists like Mary J. Blige and many more. In the course of working with those artists, Diddy’s interest in developing his musical talent was sparked beyond imagination. He put his talent to test in 1991 when he co-promoted a fundraiser with the Jamaican-American rapper Heavy D to help fight AIDS. The show was so massively attended that it resulted in a stampede in which about 10 people were declared dead.
After working at Uptown Records for just 3 years, Diddy founded his own record label in 1993 and named it Bad Boy Entertainment. Thereafter, he began to sign upcoming artists, many of whom eventually became big names in the industry such as Notorious B.I.G., Usher, Boyz II Men, and Maria Carey.
With the ebullient profile that he garnered from promoting these acts, Diddy’s Bad Boy Entertainment soon attracted admiration from far and near. But, so also did it attract bitter rivalry from Death Row Records which was founded 2 years earlier and had such A-list stars as Tupac Shakur, Snoop Dogg, and Dr. Dre in its roll call.
Determined to succeed, Diddy was able to weather the storms that arose from the conflict. Indeed, he even drew a lot of inspiration from it, leading to his debut single which was appropriately entitled “Can’t Nobody Hold Me Down”. The single was such an instant hit that it lasted for 7 months on the US Hot 100 chart, and eventually peaked at the very top of the chart. This encouraged him to drop his debut album No Way Out which topped the Hot 200 chart in its first week and sold almost 600,000 units.
After that, he released 3 more studio albums that were all great commercial successes. They are Forever (1999), The Saga Continues (2001), and Press Play (2006). Over the years, he has also gone into fashion designing with his ‘Sean John’ clothing line, spirits, restaurant franchises, and other businesses under the label, Combs Enterprises.
How Does He Spend His Money?
Right from his college days, P Diddy has been noted for one spending habit: he loves to throw expensive parties, some of which were said to have attracted up to a thousand guests. He has continued with that attitude. For instance, when his adopted son Quincey turned 16 in 1997, Diddy threw him a birthday party that was the talk of the town and presented him with two cars bought at an undisclosed amount. Two years later when his first biological son Justin hit the driving age, Diddy again threw a big party to celebrate it during which he presented Justin with a Maybach car that cost $360,000 at the time and also gave him $10,000 in cash. In 2010, he gave out a Lamborghini Gallardo Spyder which cost $300,000 to Justin Bieber at his 16th birthday.
Among other things, P Diddy also spends his net worth on real estate. His residential house in Alpine, New Jersey, reportedly cost him $7 million. He also has an estate in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles which gulped $39 million. The estate has an underwater tunnel as a part of its many unique features.
That’s not all, the man has a car collection which includes a Phantom Drophead Coupe from Rolls Royce (which costs $443,000), a Jeep Wrangler Unlimited ($31,000), and a 1958 version of Corvette (valued at $110,000).
