Rapper says his car was set on fire weeks after Sean Combs broke into his home

Rapper Kid Cudi claimed that Sean “Diddy” Combs broke into his Hollywood Hills home in 2011 after finding out he was dating Combs’s ex-girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, and that someone set fire to his car weeks later.

Cudi, whose real name is Scott Mescudi, took the witness box in Combs’s sex trafficking trial in New York and said he and Cassie briefly dated in 2011.

He said he took her to a West Hollywood hotel one day to get her away from the seething Combs.

While there, he said, he got a call from Combs’s assistant, Capricorn Clark, who told him Combs and an affiliate were in his house and that she had been forced to go with them.

Cudi said he left the hotel to drive home, and that he called Combs en route and — using an expletive — asked him why he was in his house.

He said Combs calmly replied: “I want to talk to you.”

But Combs wasn’t there when he arrived, Cudi said.

Instead, he found that someone had opened Christmas presents he’d bought for his family and locked his dog in a bathroom.

Cudi said he wasn’t sure what was going on, so he called the police.

A few weeks later, Cudi said his Porsche was destroyed by fire while parked in his driveway.

Cudi said he was at a friend’s house when his dog sitter called and “told me my car was on fire”.

Photos shown to the jury showed a hole cut in the car’s fabric roof and a Molotov cocktail was found in the passenger seat.

Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, gave evidence last week and said that Combs had threatened to blow up Cudi’s car and hurt him, after he learned she was dating the Grammy Award-winning rapper, who is known for his alternative hip-hop style.

Cudi told jurors that Combs denied involvement in the car fire when they met to try to smooth things over the next day at a Los Angeles hotel.

He said he sought the SoHo Hotel meeting — brokered by his manager and Combs’s bodyguard — because “after the fire I said, this is getting out of hand, I need to talk to him”.

Cudi said he didn’t have conflicts at the time with anyone other than Combs.

At the end of the meeting, as they stood and shook hands, Cudi said he asked Combs: “What are we going to do about my car?”

Cudi said Combs gave him a “very cold stare” and responded: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Cudi said he was miffed by Combs’s answer but let it go.

The rapper said he told Combs that he was taking him at his word. Eventually, he said, he made peace with the situation, and there were no more incidents at his house.

He denies allegations that he used threats and his powerful position in the hip-hop world to abuse women and others, and force Cassie to take part in drug-fuelled sexual performances, called “freak-offs”, with other men that she said left her too drained to pursue her singing career.

The federal investigation of Combs began in November 2023, a day after Cassie sued him in Manhattan federal court, alleging years of sexual and physical abuse.

The lawsuit was settled by Combs for 20 million dollars the next day.

In four days of evidence last week, Cassie, whose legal name is Casandra Ventura, said Combs subjected her to abuse through most of the nearly 11 years she was with him from 2007 through 2018.

She said she developed a relationship with Cudi in late 2011, which she ended within weeks after Combs learned about it when he looked at her phone during a freak-off — one of hundreds she said she endured over the years.

George Kaplan, Combs’s personal assistant from 2013 to 2015, gave evidence earlier on Thursday, saying that he saw Combs be violent with Cassie only once, on a 2015 trip to Las Vegas aboard Combs’s private jet.

He said he heard glass breaking behind him and looked over his shoulder to see Combs standing with a whiskey glass in his hand.

“There was tremendous commotion and a scuffle, and then after the glass crashed, Cassie screamed: ‘Isn’t anybody seeing this?’” Mr Kaplan said, adding that neither he nor any of the security workers or Bad Boy staff on the plane responded to her call for help.

Mr Kaplan said he did not intervene because he did not want to lose his dream job.

He said that a later incident, in which he saw Cassie sitting in a bedroom with a black eye before Combs sent him to pick up anti-inflammatory medicine to treat the injury, and the attack on the plane, led him to quit.

Mr Kaplan also said he saw Combs become violent with another girlfriend, whom he referred to only as Gina, when the rapper threw green apples at her at his Florida home.