Sean “Diddy” Combs performs onstage during the 2022 iHeartRadio Music Festival at T-Mobile Arena on September 24, 2022 in Las Vegas, Nevada. (Matt Winkelmeyer/Getty Images for iHeartRadio)
Sean “Diddy” Combs has reportedly transferred music-publishing rights to the individuals who contributed to the success of his Bad Boy Records.
A source told Variety on Monday that Combs “decided to reassign his Bad Boy publishing rights back to all Bad Boy artists and writers who helped build Bad Boy into the powerhouse it is today.”
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The recipients of those rights — believed to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars — including Faith Evans, Ma$e, The Lox, 112, Notorious B.I.G.’s estate, and “many more” creators, according to Variety.
Music mogul and entrepreneur Sean “Diddy” Combs arrives at the Billboard Music Awards in Las Vegas on May 15, 2022. (Jordan Strauss/Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)
Combs has received multi-million dollar offers for the rights to the Bad Boy catalog, but the rapper-turned-mogul instead decided to reassign the rights to the creators, the publication adds.
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The source explains that Combs — whose latest musical effort, “The Love Album: Off the Grid,” comes out on September 15 — considers the decision “part of a broader goal of promoting economic empowerment for Black artists and culture.”
Faith Evans poses in the press room at the BET Awards at the Microsoft Theater on Sunday, June 28, 2015, in Los Angeles. (Richard Shotwell/Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)
A rights reassignment would likely come as a relief to Mase, who claimed on social media in 2020 that Combs originally bought the rapper’s publishing rights for $20,000 and then declined Mase’s $2 million offer to get the rights back, according to Complex.
Fellow rapper Cam’ron revealed in an Instagram reel on August 30 that Mase “just got his publishing back from Puff” and “finished the paper work for that yesterday.”
Rapper Chris Wallace, known as Notorious B.I.G., is pictured outside his mother’s house in Brooklyn. (Clarence Davis/New York Daily News)
Publishing rights have become a hot commodity for recording artists. Stevie Nicks sold the majority of her publishing rights to music publishing company Primary Wave in 2020 for an estimated $100 million, as Rolling Stone recaps. Days later, Bob Dylan sold his songwriting catalog to Universal Music for an estimated $400 million, per the magazine.
And this January, Justin Bieber sold his publishing to Hipgnosis Songs Capital in a deal priced at more than $200 million, according to Billboard.