| May 17, 2025 
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Last Sunday, when we published a fantastic package looking at the rise (once again) of dance music — feels like very long ago now that the first five days of the Sean Combs trial are in the books. So first, a moment for that package, with a reported story by Foster Kamer exploring what’s different about the boom this time (in part: the rise of digital platforms like Boiler Room, “the hugely popular video series that pioneered the de facto online D.J. video format”), and a great accompanying guide by Foster and Rich Juzwiak with practical info: You want in on this moment? Here’s how and where to listen and dance. The Combs trial began on Monday with opening arguments that revealed both sides’ approach to the next several weeks: Prosecutors painted the music mogul as a serial sexual predator who orchestrated drug-fueled sex marathons with prostitutes. His lawyers acknowledged that he was responsible for domestic violence but denied that he had committed sex trafficking or run a racketeering enterprise. After testimony from a former security guard at the hotel where Combs assaulted Casandra Ventura (his former girlfriend, the singer Cassie) in 2016 and a man who said he had been paid up to $6,000 for sexual encounters with her, Ventura — close to nine months pregnant — took the stand for nearly four days of grueling testimony. She detailed her decade-plus relationship with Combs as one filled with so much physical abuse — black eyes, bruises, fear of him arriving at her apartment unannounced — and so many “freak-offs” (the drug-fueled sexual marathons with prostitutes that Combs would watch and film), that those encounters “became a job where there was no space to do anything else but to recover and just try to feel normal again.” She believed videos of the freak-offs were “blackmail materials” that he could release to ruin her. On cross-examination, she was asked to read dozens of explicit messages the couple had exchanged during their relationship, in a seeming attempt to show that she had been a willing and enthusiastic participant in freak-offs. She was also questioned about the couple’s drug use (she said both had been dependent on opiates) and how that may have impacted Combs’s mood at pivotal moments cited in the case. If that seems like a long summary, trust that it is a mere glimpse of the moment-to-moment live coverage that Ben Sisario, Julia Jacobs and Joe Coscarelli brought you this week from the courthouse (with help from Ben Weiser, Olivia Bensimon and Anusha Bayya and a team of editors back at the office), which is all included below, along with Joe’s illuminating portrait of Cassie and how she arrived at this moment. There were other highlights this week! Quickly: Mark Yarm’s day with Gene Simmons and the father-son duo who paid $12,495 to be his roadies; Bob Mehr’s profile of the beloved Irish hero Christy Moore at 80; Ross Scarano’s conversation with the prolific and literary rapper Billy Woods; and Matt Stevens’s look at the case of the fluctuating Beyoncé ticket prices. | THE PLAYLIST & THE AMPLIFIER NEWSLETTER | | |
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