For his 29th birthday he threw a $600,000 party in New York at which guests included Donald Trump, Kevin Costner, Muhammad Ali and the Duchess of York. Combs is a "maven", a consummate social connector, before whom all barriers of race and class dissolve.

Until he changed his name recently to P.Diddy, Combs performed under the title of Puff Daddy. But he has also tried out other sobriquet ranging from the opportunistic ("the black Sinatra") to the overweening ("the world's greatest entertainer"). In private though, he imagines himself heir to another self-made American also known to throw a good party, Jay Gatsby. ("Have I read The Great Gatsby? I am the Great Gatsby!") It doesn't seem to bother Combs that Gatsby's life ended in shattered dreams, his well-heeled friends exposed as fickle and insincere. But then, while Gatsby found it ultimately impossible to escape his humble origins, Combs has no such concerns. Far from hiding his roots he does the opposite , insisting upon, and even exaggerating, his connection to the streets of New York in order to offer himself as a brand name for black urban culture. Fitzgerald, the laureate of the jazz age, would have found it difficult to countenance that blackness could be a social asset. But this is the hip hop age. And Sean Combs' millions are based on the enormous influence that black culture now wields across America and the rest of the world.