Sean `Puffy' Combs Reveals: His `Fresh Start' After Trial Why He Will Change His Name His Feelings About Jennifer Lopez Why He Plans To Leave Show Biz For Awhile

Jet, April 16, 2001

Hip-hop music mogul Sean "Puffy" Combs is enjoying a "fresh start" in his life and career after he was found not guilty in his recent highly publicized trial on gun possession and bribery, charges.

He was acquitted of all charges brought against him after a 1999 shooting in a crowded New York City nightclub that injured three people. Combs' then-girlfriend Jennifer Lopez was with him that evening, but she was not charged in the incident.

Rapper Jamal "Shyne" Barrow, 21, a Combs hip-hop protege who admitted firing a gun inside the nightclub, was convicted of assault, reckless endangerment and weapons charges.

Combs, 31, recently talked to the media about his fresh start since the trial, why he will change his name, his feelings about ex-girlfriend, singer-actress Jennifer Lopez, and revealed his plans to leave the show business scene for awhile.

He told JET: "First of all, I give all glory to God, number one. I feel truly blessed and people hear me repeat that I give glow to God and I will always repeat that forever. No matter how good my lawyers were, no matter how much money I have, how much success that I have, how much of a celebrity I am, that did not pull me out of this. God pulled me out of this. He let the truth be heard, and I am happy that people know the truth that I am innocent. I am not guilty."

He added, "I feel truly blessed and appreciative just to be able to wake up this morning and be able to see my kids. It makes you get your priorities straight. For a long time I focused on really being the greatest entertainer and entrepreneur that I could be. This makes you evaluate to make sure that you can be the best person that you can be, the best father. God and my family are first in my life."

Combs said part of his fresh start in life will be a new name. He might change his name to P. Diddy.

"It was something I was doing for myself personally. Just like I always change my credits. I went from Puffy to Puff Daddy to Sean Jean. It's just something creatively I do and I thought it was time for a fresh new start. But at the same time, I love the name Puff Daddy, so if you want to call me Puff Daddy, it's just an addition to one of my many names. A lot of kids and people already call me that (P. Diddy). We may have an induction ceremony or we may not."

He asked JET to "tell everybody I am not going crazy," he laughed. "I am not Prince or anything like that. I am not saying Prince is crazy, but it is not serious like that."

He stressed, "You can call me P. Diddy. You can call me Puff Daddy, you can call me Sean Combs. But I will always be Sean Combs first and foremost, an actual name is an actual name."

His fresh start since the trial also can be seen in his new feelings for Jennifer Lopez.

The once-constant twosome announced their breakup on Valentine's Day. "We're still friends," he revealed. Asked if they might work on music projects together, he replied, "I don't know what the future holds."

Combs recently said the breakup was painful. "It was something that I had to get through," he revealed on "Entertainment Tonight." "This wasn't the best Valentine's Day I've had; I've had better. But, you know, it was a time I had to get through."

Combs revealed on "Entertainment Tonight" that he saw Lopez during the recent Academy Awards festivities in Hollywood. "She was beautiful. She looked beautiful. It was hot. She always looks good."

He added, "I'm not going to answer a bunch of Jennifer questions, but I will say this--we're still friends. We started out as friends, we'll always be friends. I'll always love her, you know. That's just the way it is, and I just want her to be happy. It's been a rough year. We went through a lot of things, and I'm just glad the whole ordeal is over."

Combs and Lopez were among show biz's most talked-about couples and were always a hot topic for gossip pages.

Combs told "Entertainment Tonight": "It's all good. Everybody needs to leave the hype of it alone, because at the end of the day, we are two regular people. She's a regular person to me, she's a woman who I'll always love. I'll always have a place in my heart [for her]."

Combs told JET that he plans to take a leave of absence from show business. "It's like a mini-retirement. Or they call it a leave of absence or hiatus. I feel like everybody is asking, `So, what now?' And I have always had the answer. `Well, this is what I am going to do.' But I really want to handle this differently. I want to make sure that I am not in this situation ever again. So I need time to make sure that I just look at my life as a whole, from the beginning of my life to now. What things do I want to do better; what things do I want to ]earn from; what things do I want to appreciate? Even just to sit down and appreciate, `You won two Grammys, you sold 8 million records. You are one of the most successful Black businessmen of all time.' I've always been moving and I'm not really taking time to realize it. I'm just Sean, the young cat who had the paper route and loved music. I just want to be able to enjoy that and figure out for my next era how I want to represent my race, my generation, myself and my family. I really want to take time for myself as a person."