If this were a different mother and son, the kiss that Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs gave to Janice Combs in a video from three years ago might seem a little peculiar but ultimately unremarkable.

However, the fallen music mogul and the woman who single-handedly raised him and is now purportedly managing his empire as he contests racketeering, prostitution, and sex trafficking charges—which he denies—are not just any mother and son duo.

‘Yes, my mom is beautiful,’ Combs, 55, slurs almost beyond recognition to the camera in the 2022 video that recently reappeared online. ‘Everything’s good baby, I’m here with you. I love you,’ the smiling 85-year-old matriarch responds to him. ‘I love you, too,’ Combs answers, before leaning in for their unsettling kiss.

Since he went on trial in New York on May 12, Combs’ mother, who has claimed he is the victim of a ‘public lynching’, has been a frequent presence in the courtroom, one that has been hard to miss given her revolving wardrobe of flamboyant wigs and outfits.

She appears to be taking the proceedings in her stride – courtroom artist Christine Cornell revealed last week that Ms. Combs, who has been sitting behind her, once tapped her on the shoulder and gave her the thumbs-up.

‘She likes the way I’m drawing her son,’ said Cornell, who claims she then turned to Janice Combs and asked, ‘Well, ma’am, do you mind if I draw you?’ Cornell said Combs ‘right away, started posing.’

One might have expected her to be a little more subdued, to have more to worry about, for instance, than how her allegedly monstrous son is being illustrated in media reports.

Instead, she seems to be reveling in the limelight and not remotely daunted by the mountain of deeply sordid evidence that has been brought against him.

During the first week of testimony, when Combs’s three daughters – Chance, D’Lila and Jessie – excused themselves from the courtroom during particularly graphic testimony about sexual encounters involving their father, his girlfriend Cassie Ventura and a male prostitute, their grandmother stuck it out.

Might that be because – in a novel inversion of the usual generational distinction – Janice Combs is rather less shockable than younger members of her family?

Some have suggested that anyone seeking to understand why Combs turned into the unhinged sexual predator alleged in court might look to his childhood of exposure to wild parties, drugs and sex. 

Earlier this year, a new TV documentary, Diddy: The Making of a Bad Boy, featured a revealing interview with hip hop producer Tim Patterson, a longtime childhood friend of Combs. According to Patterson, who spent a lot of time with the Combs family after moving into their basement, Janice would regularly throw wild parties at their home in Mount Vernon, suburban New York, and it was not uncommon to walk into a room and stumble on adults having sex.

She indulged her Gucci watch-wearing young son, said his friend. ‘On the weekend, [Janice Combs] partied in the house, and we did that a lot,’ Patterson recalled. ‘[Sean Combs] was around all types of alcohol; he was around reefer smoke. Drug addicts around, lesbians around, homosexuals, he was around pimps, pushers. That was just who was in our house. People that attended the parties were from Harlem, from the streets. It wouldn’t be a thing to mistakenly walk into one of the bedrooms and you got a couple in there, butt naked.’

Patterson went on: ‘Was it desensitizing us? I’m sure it was. Were we aware of it? No, that was just Saturday night.’

Patterson said Janice’s disturbing sexual behavior and Sean’s unstable home life may well explain why he has ended up accused of being one of the worst predators in showbusiness history, drugging and forcing women such as ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura to take part in marathon orgies with sex workers he called ‘freak offs’.

‘I’ve always been asked the question why,’ Patterson told the documentary makers. ‘I don’t know the answer to why, but I truly believe it all goes back to childhood.’

DJ EZ Lee Davis, another music industry insider who was from Mount Vernon and once close to Combs, said he’d also heard about Janice’s infamous parties – where ‘everyone was welcome’.

‘She had little cool chicks that would come around and … she made sure everybody was comfortable,’ Davis told the documentary, laughing.

Combs has also admitted he had an early introduction to sex, watching softcore porn as a child and losing his virginity aged 12 when he started trying to copy the rough behavior he’d seen onscreen.

‘I was acting just like porn stars act. I was smacking that ass. I was smackin’ the girls’ ass,’ he told Vibe magazine in 1999. ‘I didn’t do it on my own, she wanted me to smack that ass. I flipped her over because I saw it on the movie and then she told me to do it again, so, you know.’

Combs was only three when his father, Melvin, an alleged criminal and known associate of Harlem drug barons, was found dead in his car, shot twice in the head. Rival theories say he was either killed in an apparent drug deal that went wrong or shot for being a police informant.

Janice, a former model and kindergarten teacher, decided to move him and his sister, Keisha, from Harlem to the safer environs of Mount Vernon.

Although she tried to keep him out of trouble – he was an altar boy and attended a private Catholic high school – Combs was not streetwise or tough and was badly bullied, said Patterson.

And a doting mother couldn’t replace a father figure, said Patterson, who told the Daily Mail: ‘My dad instilled some things in me that let me know there’s only but so far people can go with you – win, lose, or draw. And these might’ve been some of the things Sean could’ve gotten as a child had he had a father, right?

He went on: ‘In my home, there were boots and there were high-heeled shoes in the closet. In Sean’s home, there were high-heeled shoes. There were no boots. So that makes sense. There was something missing from his maturing.’

Representatives for Janice Combs didn’t return a request for comment on Patterson’s claims.

People who’ve been close to the Combs family say P Diddy and Janice are undoubtedly exceptionally close and that he is devoted to her.

After his father died, his mother became ‘his world’, Rob Shuter, Combs’s former publicist, told the Daily Mail. ‘He idolized her, she was like a godlike figure for him… her approval was something he was desperate for.’

Anyone who worked for Combs was working for his mother, too, he said, ‘She was the boss, the queen bee.’

Whenever he appeared on TV, Combs would text her in advance so she could watch, and when he did press interviews, he would make sure copies were sent to his mother.

The ‘utmost respect’ he had for her, noted Shuter, was in sharp contrast to the way he’s been accused of treating other women. Although Combs could be the ‘boss from hell’ – screaming, shouting and throwing objects in regular temper tantrums – he was always on ‘best behavior’ when his mother was around, said Shuter.

The latter, who discusses Combs at length on his podcast and Substack, Naughty But Nice, said he never heard of Janice throwing her own sex parties but acknowledged she was a ‘very sexual woman’ who always thought it was ‘important to look sexy and young’.

Although he said the video of Combs kissing his mother on the lips left him feeling ‘uncomfortable’, he said the couple always had a very touchy-feely relationship and were endlessly holding hands.

Might his mother have had any inkling of the gross sexual misconduct alleged by New York prosecutors? Shuter is doubtful, believing she would have done her best to close it down, as she wouldn’t have wanted her son to leave himself so vulnerable.

He said there was currently internal fighting within the Combs family over who should be in charge with P Diddy behind bars, but that Janice had triumphed over her grandchildren and was very much running the show.

Janice’s pivotal role in her son’s multi-million-dollar business is borne out by Deon Best, a former friend of Combs, who has accused mother and son of fraudulently siphoning off publishing and royalty rights from artists on Diddy’s record label.

Best, a former gangster, claims in a new lawsuit that the pair deprived him and others of their rightful earnings. ‘All of my publishing rights went to Janice Combs,’ he told the Daily Mail. Other artists who worked with Combs have also claimed Diddy was able to circumvent the terms of their deals in a similar way.

In a lawsuit filed on February 26, Bad Boy Records co-founder Kirk Burrowes claimed Janice Combs unlawfully assumed control of his 25 percent ownership stake in Bad Boy after her son coerced Burrowes into signing over his share by threatening physical violence.

Both cases are currently in litigation and both Combs and his mother deny all wrongdoing.