In the sprawling world of Black pop culture podcasts, its own media ecosystem covering the story lines and people central to the hip-hop genre, the one topic that dominated conversation this week was, unsurprisingly, the latest in the saga of Sean Combs.
On Monday, federal agents raided the Los Angeles and Miami homes of Combs, the hip-hop mogul who has been accused in several civil lawsuits of sexual assault. He has vehemently denied all the claims. The news spurred days of freewheeling and varied reactions from radio personalities and podcast hosts whose discourse veered toward humor, speculation and denial, far from the tone struck by traditional news outlets.
The rapper Mase, who topped charts as an artist signed to Combs’s Bad Boy record label in the late ’90s before their relationship soured, avoided addressing him by name on the sports-centric “It Is What It Is” podcast a day after the raids, but laughed and said that “reparations is getting closer and closer.”
The same day, hosts of the popular morning radio show “The Breakfast Club” criticized the actions of the authorities — which Combs’s lawyer called an “unprecedented ambush, paired with an advanced, coordinated media presence” — as unnecessary: Charlamagne Tha God said he was curious about what information they had to justify the raids. Jessica Moore, known as “Jess Hilarious” implied that the federal action was reminiscent of a television show. The third host, DJ Envy, agreed, and said the authorities acted like “they were going for the mob.”
The former N.B.A. player Gilbert Arenas, who hosts the “No Chill” podcast, posted a 10-minute special episode on YouTube on Thursday that discussed the raids.
“It’s over, no, it’s done, they got you,” he said, while laughing.
To provide context for his listeners, Arenas said he had been at the scene of more than a dozen raids while he was in “the weed game, the poker game.” He noted that those raids happened between 1 a.m. and 5 a.m.
“The fact that they raided this dude in the middle of the day so everybody could see it, this was more embarrassing,” Arenas said.
Combs, also known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, has denied all the allegations against him, with one of his lawyers, Aaron Dyer, calling the raid “nothing more than a witch hunt based on meritless accusations made in civil lawsuits.”
“There has been no finding of criminal or civil liability with any of these allegations,” Dyer added. “Mr. Combs is innocent and will continue to fight every single day to clear his name.”
In recent years, podcasts and radio shows devoted to hip-hop culture have risen in prominence, particularly those which lean into interviews and commentary. Black-led shows have carved out a lucrative industry for their fun, informal insider tone and perspective unavailable on other mass-audience platforms.
“You have this space that opens up where all of the journalism is just rampant fandom,” said A.D. Carson, an associate professor of hip-hop at the University of Virginia. “Fan service can exist where people who were formerly artists or who have that kind of access might still leverage that access to be able to have something to say about whatever is going on.”
Combs has been a popular conversation topic since November, when he settled a lawsuit by his former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, who makes music as the singer Cassie and had accused him of rape, physical abuse and forced sex with male prostitutes. Three other women accused Combs of sexual misconduct in lawsuits in the following weeks, and the producer Rodney Jones Jr., known as Lil Rod, filed a similar lawsuit in February.
In January, the comedian Katt Williams said he had turned down invitations to party with Combs in a conversation on “Club Shay Shay,” the podcast hosted by Shannon Sharpe, an ESPN personality and former N.F.L. player.
Earlier in the lengthy conversation, which received 63 million views on YouTube, Williams said that Combs and others he called “deviants” would be “catching hell in 2024,” saying that “all lies will be exposed.”
This week’s raids rejuvenated interest in Combs around the podcast world.
For about 40 minutes on Wednesday’s episode of the former rapper Joe Budden’s podcast, he and four other hosts discussed the tracking of Combs’s private jet, the false speculation that he fled the country, silence from A-list celebrities and potential next steps in the federal investigation.
“This is a wrap,” Budden said. “Not only is this a wrap, this is about to get much worse.”
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