DINH DOONG

Despite being molded into a successful artist and businessman, Usher doesn’t want to pass on any advice he learned from Diddy as a child.

Image by Reckless Dream Photography, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons.The music industry has had its ups and downs and its fair share of drama. The year-round lovers’ spats and controversies alone are enough to fill a whole Taylor Swift album. However, after the year that Diddy has had, even Swift can take a bow and rest assured that no amount of Kanye running up on stage to snatch her spotlight can shift the focus from the now-disgraced rapper.

Diddy performing at the Toronto International Film Festival [Photo by Richard Burdett, licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons]

While the record label boss’s career has been stepping in and out of the shadows and the grey areas since the early ’90s, it is only now that the world has unraveled the layers upon layers of red flags that had shrouded Diddy’s personal life in mystery and obscurity from the public eye. Now, facts and truths that were otherwise disregarded as non-essential have started coming to light regarding the Grammy winner.

Diddy’s Disciples Stray Away From Their Mentor

Sean “Diddy” Combs [Photo by Shamsuddin Muhammad, licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons]

Born in 1969 in Harlem, New York, Sean “Diddy” Combs showed promise as a musician from an early age that he later harnessed to open his own record label, aptly titled Bad Boy. In the years that followed, Combs was credited with discovering and developing future musical talents like Mary J. Blige, Notorious B.I.G. aka Biggie, and Usher.

Infamous for his notorious rivalry with Tupac Shakur and for throwing the “best” parties in Hollywood, including his White Parties that hosted the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio, the Kardashians, Ashton Kutcher, and Jay-Z, the reputation that P. Diddy has accrued in the years since has not been all that great.

As such, it is understandable when Usher had some reserves before passing on his mentor’s sage advice to his own mentee, Justin Bieber when the latter ambled into the cutthroat industry. After all, it was not very responsible to share advice that sounded a lot like “s*x, drugs, and alcohol” to a 15-year-old.

Usher Takes Justin Bieber Under His Wing

Justin Bieber performing in Illinois in 2015 [Photo by Lou Stejskal, licensed under CC BY 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons]

For Usher, the experiences he had as a young music artist were not the same ones he wanted to pass along when it was his time to mentor a teenage pop star. Discovered at an early age by Puff Daddy, Usher was molded into his role by sharing a considerable amount of time with the controversial music mogul. In an interview with Club Shay Shay, Usher revealed:That man helped me understand life. He helped me understand what it was to be an artist, he helped me understand what it was to be passionate about something. He helped me understand culture. He helped me understand business at a different level, because I’m seeing him go from his independence to then becoming Puff Daddy. And I got a front row seat looking at that. Thank God that I had that experience.

However, the price of learning about the complexities of life as a music artist and the business side of things that accompany such a life was too high. So, when the time came around for Usher to pass along his experiences to his new mentee, Justin Bieber, he took a wildly different approach. In an interview with MTV News [via Global Grind], Usher admitted:

I had Puff as my mentor, but I wouldn’t pass on any of the advice he gave me. Hip-hop, sex, drugs, and alcohol wouldn’t really work for Justin’s image. He’s headed in the right direction. I’ve told him to do everything I wouldn’t do.

In hindsight, Justin Bieber hasn’t entirely evaded the lifestyle commanded by scandals and controversies. The young pop star who burned fast and bright now enjoys retirement and a blissfully married life with model, Hailey Bieber.