Cassie Testifies Diddy Ditched "Freak-Off" to Hunt Down Suge Knight with Guns in Tow

Singer and former Bad Boy Records artist Cassie testified that Sean "Diddy" Combs terminated a "freak-off" at his L.A. home after he discovered that Suge Knight was supposedly close by, according to Cassie. The term "freak-off" was not defined in court, but judging by how Avila described it, he believed the night was not a typical house party.

"We were at one of his spots in L.A. having a freak-off, and he told me Suge was at Mel's Diner," Cassie remembered. "And we packed up quickly and went."

Cassie recalled that Diddy and a bodyguard were both dressed in all black when they grabbed guns and rushed out of the home. She recounted a scene of chaos and panic as she watched Combs arm himself for a confrontation that she worried would turn violent. "I was screaming and crying," she said in court. "I pleaded with him, 'Don't do something dumb."

He left anyway, and when he returned, there was silence. She told him he wouldn't share what happened at Mel's Diner or whether Suge Knight was even there. The whole episode, she suggested, was shrouded in mystery and threat.

The testimony casts a new and fierce light on the long-simmering beef between two of hip-hop's towering and polarizing figures: Diddy, the glossy mogul behind Bad Boy Records, and Suge Knight, the fearsome master of Death Row Records. Their competitiveness fueled the infamous East Coast–West Coast conflict that defined the 1990s and left a grim, long shadow over hip-hop.

That tension was most publicly on display at the 1995 Source Awards when Knight infamously taunted Diddy, then known as Puff Daddy, with what has become a legendary diss: "To all you artists out there who don't wanna be a superstar/ Up here, not if you wanna be a star/ If you wanna be a star, if you wanna not have to worry about the executive producer trying to be all in the videos, all on the records, dancing, come to Death Row." Diddy came back with more of a sane man's plea for unity: "All of this East and West that needs to stop."

But if Cassie's account is valid, old wounds may never have closed. And now, years later, both men are making headlines once more. Knight, who is now serving a 28-year prison sentence for manslaughter, tweeted Thursday from behind bars: "Justice for 2Pac is coming. Keefe D and now Diddy!!!"

With investigations and the tensions of her own past rising, Cassie is forced to confront whether anyone really can leave the darkness behind and what grim, tangled threads can be found in the most glamorous of places. Behind the dramatic beauties and the gleaming lies a sinister scenario, and Cassie is in far more danger than she ever could have expected.