Diddy’s Bad Boys For Life protégé Mark Curry is revealing the secret meaning behind a song he wrote for the mogul early in his career – and how the rapper skimmed his profits.
In Diddy’s trialIn , the new Daily Mail podcast launching today, Curry claims the disgraced music mogul took away his credit and profits from the songs he wrote.
Mark Curry signed to Bad Boy Record in 1997 and for years said Diddy promised him he would release his own album.
Instead, Curry said he ended up writing songs that Diddy took credit for.
One of them was the smash hit Come With Me, which appeared on the soundtrack of the 1998 film Godzilla, sold one million copies in the United States and reached number four on the Billboard charts.
Mark Curry signed to Bad Boy Record in 1997 and said that for years Diddy promised him he would release his own album, but he never did, instead taking credit for his work.
Curry claimed that Diddy not only took credit for the song for his creation, but that its lyrics were about the pain and betrayal Diddy caused him.
‘When I closed the publishing deal, I had just finished writing the song Godzilla Come With Me. And that song was going to be a big hit,” he said.
“And he knew that at that time I didn’t have a publishing situation with me… and he had executed the production contract that I was going to sign.”
When it came time to release the song, Curry said Diddy “was very adamant about making sure I signed the contract.”
The contract meant that Curry would sign over half of the publishing rights and in return would receive “X amount of dollars.”
“But if I didn’t sign the contract, he wouldn’t let me write the song because I wouldn’t get the percentage I would need.
“So, in order for us to use this song, you will have to sign this contract. So I thought, “Okay, they had the contract.”
Curry signed the contract, but later found out he would only receive $25,000, even though he was worth between $8 million and $10 million.
‘Why don’t you wait until we have a value and then make me an offer? Why are you offering me a deal on something whose capabilities we don’t even understand? he told the podcast.
Diddy at the 1998 MTV Movie Awards in Los Angeles, the year the song was released.
And that’s the nonsense. The treatment comes before the work. So you offer me a deal after we achieve what we’re after.
When it was released in 1998, Come With Me was an instant hit.
‘When I wrote that song, I was trying to write a song for Puff. And I was trying to put it in the words that I thought would describe it best,” Curry said.
‘It was a really huge song. It was perhaps one of the most important songs I ever wrote. And it was a huge song. It was recorded… I wrote that song.’
Speaking in the first episode of Diddy’s trialCurry revealed that the hidden meaning behind the song was what he was saying to Diddy at the time.
‘If you listen to that song, every word was what I was saying to him. You said to trust me. You know, you have to listen to that song, those words,’ he said.
“Then I realized I wanted to start writing more songs about how I was feeling and how I was feeling so hurt that all my songs came out.”
Curry appeared on numerous Bad Boy Records tracks until he left the label in 2005, including the smash hit Bad Boy for Life in 2001.
Curry appeared on numerous Bad Boy Records tracks until he left the label in 2005, including the smash hit Bad Boy for Life in 2001.
He wrote his tell-all memoir Dancing with the Devil (referring to Diddy) in 2009, which he said was written up progressively as a form of insurance.
Curry said he hoped Diddy would “try to treat me fairly if he knew I was going to air his dirty laundry,” but it didn’t work.
The book claims that Curry not only wrote Come With Me, but also sang a vocal guide for Diddy that he followed so closely that he even perfectly imitated Curry’s hand gestures and facial movements.
Then the Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down in a drive-by shooting and Diddy needed Curry to write even more for him, with the promise of riches.
Instead, he hung around for years, appearing in numerous music videos, writing some of Diddy’s biggest hits, and appearing to the world as a cashed-in right-hand man but getting paid a pittance.
Curry detailed how Diddy even scammed his artists by insisting on singing his hits and then charging them a huge fee or a portion of the profits that they only found out about when smaller-than-expected royalty checks arrived.
Diddy tried the same trick by inserting his fleet of sports cars into his music videos and charging huge fees for the privilege.
Other times he forced his way into songwriting and production credits on tracks he wasn’t involved with.
Curry wrote his tell-all memoir Dancing with the Devil (referring to Diddy) in 2009.
Curry was paid so little that he sold his backstage passes to Diddy’s concerts and seriously considered selling marijuana to support his family.
“Last year, I lost my home in foreclosure, like thousands of other American families who put too much faith in their peers, like the sweet lady at the mortgage refinancing company,” he wrote.
‘Today I am homeless and I still drive a 1992 Honda Accord that I bought at an auction. I still can’t afford health insurance for my son, my wife or myself.’
Meanwhile, Diddy flaunted his extreme wealth in front of those he exploited, Curry wrote.
Curry told the DailyMail.com Podcast He was not surprised that it took Diddy being accused of sex trafficking and other disturbing crimes for sordid stories about his exploits to come to light.
“What we are yet to discover that hasn’t been discovered yet or hasn’t really been talked about much yet will come to the surface,” he said.
‘We’re just scratching that. But once we see and understand the true story of what is happening, then we can understand why it took so long, because it’s not just about one person. It involves several people.
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