G Dep has described one of the last relaxed moments he shared with Diddy before the Bad Boy founder’s arrest.
It was a family-filled meal at Melba’s that took place shortly after the rapper left a halfway house, and he said he had no idea a federal case was closing in on his former label boss.
The timing still strikes the Harlem rapper as surreal. He was walking back into freedom just as Diddy was about to lose his. “That’s basically how that went,” he said.
According to G Dep, Diddy made a point of reconnecting soon after his release. “He came and seen me,” he said, recalling that Diddy visited him while he was still at the halfway house.
Their first outing was low-key. G Dep remembered Diddy asking what he wanted to do, and the two settling on something simple. “Yo, just ride around. Let’s go get something to eat,” he recalled.
A few days later, on the day of a parade, G Dep got a call from someone in Diddy’s circle inviting him to meet the group at Melba’s. The message was casual and welcoming. “Just come through, bring your wife,” he recalled being told.
At the restaurant, the atmosphere felt different from an ordinary dinner. G Dep said Diddy’s relatives had turned out in force. “His whole family was there,” he said.
He noted that Diddy has always valued family, but this gathering seemed to carry extra weight. It looked as though they were “kind of having like a get together,” he explained.
Looking back, G Dep said something in Diddy’s manner that evening seemed off. As they parted ways, Diddy’s goodbye had the tone of an open-ended farewell, something along the lines of “see you when I see you.” G Dep said he remembered wondering where Diddy was going.
Roughly a day later, the reason became clear. G Dep said he received a phone call telling him, “they got him.” His first reaction was confusion. “I was like got who,” he recalled.
The news caught him completely off guard. “I didn’t know that he was being investigated,” he said.
G Dep explained that he had followed some of the headlines from behind bars, including news coverage of the raids on Diddy’s mansions. At the time, he did not believe the situation would lead anywhere serious. “I’m looking at that on the news and I’m just thinking he going to get around all of that,” he said.
His reasoning was based on what he understood from the reports. As far as he could tell, authorities had come up empty during the searches. “He ain’t find nothing,” he said of the raids, adding that he simply accepted that the matter would blow over.
That belief made the call about Diddy’s arrest all the more jarring. “I was like, ‘Wow,'” he recalled.
The case that followed went to court and brought a wave of allegations and public scrutiny, including a leaked video that circulated widely. Diddy remains in prison.
For G Dep, the memory of that dinner at Melba’s now carries a different meaning. What seemed at the time like a warm reunion with a longtime associate and his family turned out to be one of the last gatherings before Diddy’s world changed dramatically.
The rapper, fresh from his own time inside, found himself watching a man who had once helped shape his career head in the opposite direction.
