With Diddy dealing with allegations of abuse and sexual misconduct, Jelly Roll shared how he came close to having his picture taken with the now-controversial rap icon.
Jelly Roll, 39, shared his near-brush with Diddy, 54, on the April 5 episode of the “Cancelled with Tana Mongeau” podcast. Jelly Roll had a chance to meet Diddy when they both appeared on Jimmy Kimmel Live in October 2023. “This is the first time in my career, ever, where they said, ‘Do you want to meet such-and-such?’ And I said, ‘Yeah,’ and I started walking that way.”
“And as I was getting down the hallway — this is a true story — I said, ‘Nah,’ and went and got back in the car. Swear. I don’t know what it was,” continued Jelly Roll. “I made a joke at first. I was like, ‘Who don’t wanna meet the guy that got Tupac [Shakur] killed?’ And nobody thought that was funny, so I was like, ‘Ooh, that was a bomb, maybe I shouldn’t go do this anyway.’”
Jelly Roll felt uneasy about meeting Diddy because of that failed joke, one he said he wouldn’t have made around the “I’ll Be Missing You” rapper. But, Jelly Roll noted that as he was walking, he had a bad feeling about the whole affair.
“I was just like, ‘I don’t know,’” he said. “Very seldom does things rub me in a way where I was like, ‘I don’t even know if that’s a picture I want.’
The episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live happened a few weeks before Diddy’s ex-girlfriend Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed a lawsuit accusing him of rape and abuse. Jelly Roll said that his decision to bail wasn’t about that, but how he felt uneasy of just having his picture taken with someone he didn’t know.
“I’ve ended up in pictures with people I didn’t want to be with, just ’cause motherf—kers are on a carpet around the same time,” he said on the podcast. “And you’re like, ‘Yo, I don’t really know who this human is.’”
Since that October episode of Kimmel, Diddy’s legal woes have increased. In December 2023, an anonymous plaintiff named Diddy in a sexual assault lawsuit, his fourth at the time. In February 2024, producer Rodney “Lil Rod” Jones sued Diddy, accusing him of sexually harassing, drugging, and threatening him for more than a year. Jones also accused Diddy of sex trafficking multiple women. Diddy’s attorney denied the allegations, referring to Jones as a “liar” in a statement to Us Weekly.
On March 25, the Department of Homeland Security conducted raids on both Diddy’s Miami and Los Angeles homes. A DHS spokesperson said that the raids were in connection to an ongoing federal sex trafficking investigation. Diddy’s attorney slammed the “overuse of military-level force” of the raids, considering that Diddy cooperated with the authorities.
Jelly Roll’s failed joke touched upon a longstanding rumor that Diddy was behind the 1996 drive-by-shooting that took the West Coast rapper’s life.
With Diddy facing so many allegations, fans unearthed a line from Eminem’s “Killshot,” his Machine Gun Kelly diss-track that he released in 2018.
“Kells,” rapped Eminem, addressing MGK directly, “the day you put out a hit’s the day Diddy admits that he put the hit out that got Pac killed, ah!”
Many came to Diddy’s defense in 2018 after the diss track. In a now-deleted episode of Joe Budden’s podcast, Diddy said that “there’s nothing to say” about the baseless accusations of hiring someone to kill Tupac. Diddy also said the issue between him and Eminem had been “handled” privately.
