ean Combs – the recording artist, hip-hop label boss and fashion mogul also known as P Diddy, Puff Daddy and Love – allegedly ordered the murder of West Coast rapper Tupac Shakur in 1996, in exchange for a $US1 million kill fee payable to members of LA gang The Crips.

The explosive claim is one of the main takeaways from the four-part Netflix documentary Sean Combs: The Reckoning, and comes two months after he was sentenced to 50 months in jail after being found guilty in July of two charges of transportation to engage in prostitution.

This masthead is not suggesting that any of the allegations made against Combs in the documentary are true, only that they have been made.

Combs’ legal team, which is preparing to fight another 77 charges, has mounted a legal challenge to the documentary series, directed by Emmy winner Alexandria Stapleton and executive produced by rapper 50 Cent, on the grounds that it makes extensive usage of footage shot in the run-in to his trial in New York, without permission.

The Combs team insist the footage was “stolen”, and have labelled the series “a shameful hit piece”. Netflix insists the footage was legally obtained.

That dispute means there’s at least a theoretical risk that the documentary might disappear at any moment.

So, for the sake of posterity and just in case, here are some of the biggest takeaways from a show packed to the gills with shocking details from some of the people who know him best – his childhood best friend, his former manager, the co-founder of his business and a number of artists who worked with him and lived to tell the tale.

Nature or nurture?

Sean Combs tried to present himself as a respectable businessman, but there was always a darker side.

His father was a drug dealer, who was shot dead when Sean was two years old. “I never got a chance to know him,” Combs said in a 2006 interview, a clip of which appears in the series. “He got his brains blown out in Central Park West.”

New photos of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in prison released

New images of Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs in a US prison have been released, showing the music mogul interacting with other inmates.

But he did get to learn about him. “It was like a sigh of relief … because I finally knew that what I was feeling was true. That I was the son of a hustler, of a gangster.”

As a child, Combs was dressed as a Harlem pimp, in furs and fancy hats, by his mother, Janice. She took him along in her Cadillac while she did drops in the city. She played Blaxploitation movies at home and threw wild parties.

“There was a stage in the living room, and we used to have to go and dance,” says childhood friend Tim “Dawg” Patterson, a key interview subject. “And everybody’s calling you ‘baby’, and everybody’s saying, ‘Do that dance’.”

Allegations of sexual violence from a young age

The allegations of sexual violence date back to at least 1991, which is when Joi Dickerson-Neal claims she was drugged and assaulted by Combs.

She alleges he videotaped the attack, which took place while she was unconscious. He was 22 at the time. Her case is still pending.

Former business partner Kirk Burrowes, who met Combs when the singer was 19 and co-founded Bad Boy Entertainment with him five years later, claims Combs was aping the behaviour of a Harlem drug dealer called Alpo Martinez, who would screen videos of his sexual conquests at a nightclub, while also paying tribute to his own father.

“All his life he’s been trying to honour a man he believed was a famous Harlem gangster, and that gave him a certain mythic presence,” Burrowes observes.