Sean Combs, the hip-hop mogul who has been going through mounting authorized scrutiny over allegations of sexual and bodily abuse, has offered his majority stake in Revolt, the media firm that he based, the group introduced Tuesday.
The biggest shareholder group at Revolt, a non-public firm, is now made up of staff, its chief government, Detavio Samuels, mentioned in an interview forward of the announcement.
Now identified greatest for well-liked video podcasts reminiscent of “Drink Champs,” “The Jason Lee Present” and “Caresha Please,” Revolt was began by Mr. Combs greater than a decade in the past as a music industry-focused cable channel meant to spice up Black illustration on tv.
In January, after a wave of lawsuits had been filed in opposition to Mr. Combs, he agreed to begin the method of separation from Revolt, Mr. Samuels mentioned.
Mr. Combs’s enterprise empire has shrunk considerably since November, when Casandra Ventura — his former girlfriend, who performs music as Cassie — filed a lawsuit accusing him of years of bodily and sexual abuse. The go well with was settled in a day, however 5 extra adopted from ladies who accused Mr. Combs of sexual assault.
Mr. Combs, 54, who’s often known as Puff and Diddy, mentioned final yr that the lawsuits contained “sickening allegations” from “people on the lookout for a fast payday.”
Within the months following Ms. Ventura’s submitting, Mr. Combs stepped down as chairman of the Revolt board; offered his half of a liquor model for about $200 million after attorneys for its mum or dad firm complained that his fame had been tarnished; and noticed a New York constitution college community he helped develop finish its partnership with him.
“One-hundred p.c of Sean Combs’s shares have been redeemed and retired,” Mr. Samuels mentioned within the interview. “He’s now not chairman. He’s now not on the board. He has no shares, no fairness in Revolt. We’ve fully separated and dissociated from one another.”
Mr. Samuels declined to say how a lot Mr. Combs was paid for his stake in Revolt. With Mr. Combs out, there is no such thing as a majority proprietor within the firm. A consultant for Mr. Combs didn’t instantly reply to a request for touch upon Tuesday.
A hip-hop impresario who made his identify within the Nineties as a founding father of the Dangerous Boy file label, Mr. Combs made a leap into cable TV possession in 2012, pushed by his imaginative and prescient of a Black-owned and run media firm overlaying Black tradition. When the channel began up the following yr, it was marketed as a kind of MTV for a youthful, extra social media-focused era.
The enterprise has shifted considerably lately from cable towards digital media, and Mr. Samuels mentioned Revolt’s enterprise is now largely pushed by digital promoting. Revolt’s hottest packages additionally stream on YouTube, the place the corporate has 2.8 million subscribers; it began a podcast community in 2022.
Although Revolt had lengthy embraced Mr. Combs because the face of its model, the corporate has distanced itself from him in current months, because the lawsuits have piled up and Homeland Safety raids on two of his houses indicated a deepening federal investigation into his conduct.
Within the interview, Mr. Samuels, who joined Revolt in 2020, mentioned that even earlier than the lawsuits, Mr. Combs had “little to no interplay with the staff” on the firm, which has greater than 110 full-time staff.
Regardless of the purported distance between Mr. Combs and Revolt, the workers has nonetheless been shaken by the cascade of stories surrounding the corporate’s founder, together with the hotel-security footage that CNN revealed final month of Mr. Combs hanging, kicking and dragging Ms. Ventura in 2016. The video corroborated a part of Ms. Ventura’s lawsuit and prompted an apology from Mr. Combs, who mentioned his conduct was “inexcusable.” Mr. Combs’s authorized staff has been preventing the lawsuits in opposition to him in court docket, blaming one in every of them for having “irreparably broken” Mr. Combs’s fame primarily based on “rank, uncorroborated allegations.”
In response to the discharge of the resort footage, Revolt offered entry to particular person and group therapists for workers, Mr. Samuels mentioned.
Whereas some have speculated that rich buyers would swoop in to take over Revolt, underneath the brand new construction, present and future full-time staff will obtain fairness within the firm. With a workers that’s about 80 p.c individuals of colour, Mr. Samuels mentioned, the corporate is aiming to handle a historical past in the USA of “permitting Black and brown individuals to construct multi-trillion-dollar industries with out permitting them the profit.”
“What we realized is, we had been all we wanted,” he mentioned.
