Sean “Love” Combs is planning to launch an all-R&B label.
The rap mogul, formerly known as Diddy, announced the news in his Vanity Fair September issue cover story, revealing, “I’m coming back to music.
“I feel like R&B was abandoned and it’s a part of our African American culture,” the Bad Boy Records founder said.
And I’m not signing any artists. Because if you know better, you do better. I’m doing 50-50 partnerships with pure transparency. That’s the thing. [The new label is so that] we can own the genre; we don’t own hip-hop right now. We have a chance to—and I’m going to make sure that—we own R&B.”
The news comes months after Combs published an open letter to “corporate America,” accusing U.S. corporations of exploiting black culture without fair compensation.
He received some backlash from people who criticized his own business practices.
“I can’t get caught up in that,” he told Vanity Fair. “I know where my heart is at.”