The ‘secret project’ Diddy and Jay-Z were working on: “We’re not trying to hurt nobody”
Diddy and Jay-Z have known each other for over two decades having collaborated for the first time in 1997. The pair nearly took their working relationship away from music in 2018 with plans for a “secret project” to be released.
The project in question was an app that would allow users to find black-owned and black-friendly businesses in a particular area. At the time he revealed plans for the app, it wasn’t finished and didn’t have a name.
“I want to be an authentic, unapologetic warrior for black culture and the culture of the street and how it moves,” Combs told GQ in 2018. “My thing is most important: to change the narrative of the black race. I can’t relate to anything that isn’t about that.”
Despite putting the focus on black businesses, he stated that his mission wasn’t against any other races. “This is not about taking away from any other community,” the Bad Boy boss said. “We’ll still go to Chinatown. We’ll still buy Gucci! But the application will make it possible for us to have an economic community. It’s about blacks gaining economic power.”
Diddy explained that he had been having conversations with Jay-Z about making money and putting it back into the community. “I don’t believe in passiveness,” he said. “At some point, there has to be some kind of fight. I feel like we’ve done a lot of marching. It’s time to start charging.”
Speaking one-to-one, Combs said that he and Jay-Z had been using the term “black excellence” for people uplifting the race. “We’re into psychological warfare,” he said. “The difference is, we’re not trying to hurt nobody.”
In 2023, Combs announced the launch of a digital marketplace for consumers to discover black-owned businesses. Empower Global is an e-commerce platform that gives black-owned brands the chance to reach a bigger audience. “My mission has always been to empower black entrepreneurs and create more opportunities for them to access the resources, tools and support needed to build successful businesses,” he said in a press release.
Combs explained that he had been thinking about how to create radical change for a while. “I’m extremely passionate about creating a platform that will show the power of unity,” he said in an Instagram video. “[Through] my life’s work and the different stages of success, I’ve realised for our people to break through and advance we have to do things together.”
He continued, “Empower Global represents a solution to all of the things that have held our communities back. Let’s unite, brand by brand, company by company, person by person, customer by customer and dollar by dollar.”
However, Empower Global’s social media platforms have since gone silent, with the website’s security certificate being expired in April.