Shyne feels no sense of victory seeing his onetime mentor Sean “Diddy” Combs behind bars.
“That’s not what I want from the universe. I don’t say to myself, ‘Yeah,’ you know, ‘it’s your turn now!’ Like, that’s not the type of person that I am,” the former rapper, 46, tells Page Six exclusively while promoting his forthcoming Hulu documentary, “The Honorable Shyne.”
Combs, who is awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges, “has to deal with his debt to the universe,” according to Shyne, who prays the disgraced hip-hop mogul, 55, is “able to reform and fix himself.”
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12 Born Jamal Barrow, Shyne was on the verge of mainstream success in the music industry in 1999 when he went to a Manhattan nightclub with his pal and boss, Combs, and the Bad Boy Records founder’s then-girlfriend, Jennifer Lopez.
As the evening progressed, an altercation broke out between Combs and another man during which guns were drawn, shots were fired and three bystanders were injured.
Both Shyne and Combs went on trial in 2001, and despite one of the victims claiming the Sean Jean founder had accidentally shot her, only his protégé was convicted of assault and reckless endangerment.
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12 Shyne served eight years in prison and refused to rat out Combs despite being pressured to turn on him.
“I grew up [being told] to not get my friends in trouble,” he says. “And that’s what it really boiled down to, integrity about character.”
The “Bad Boyz” rapper explains that he believed he was protecting Combs but claims the “I’ll Be Missing You” hitmaker “got witnesses to testify against me, to say that basically I was this uncontrollable person that was acting in a depraved manner, which was the furtherest from the truth.”
Shyne reiterates that he did not feel he could speak out against Combs because it would “break the code of honor, which is that you don’t get people in trouble.”
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12 A rep for Combs “categorically” denies the “unequivocally false” allegations, “including any suggestion that he orchestrated Mr. Barrow to ‘take the fall’ or ‘sacrificed’ him by directing witnesses to testify against him.”
The rep says Combs “appreciates the path Mr. Barrow has pursued” as a politician in Belize and “wishes him continued success,” adding, “It is unfortunate that Mr. Barrow has chosen to revisit these allegations. Mr. Combs trusts that responsible journalism will weigh both the established legal outcomes and Mr. Combs’ positive, longstanding support for those he has worked with.”
The Nov. 18 release of Shyne’s documentary comes after Combs was arrested in September on three charges: racketeering conspiracy; sex trafficking by force, fraud or coercion; and transportation to engage in prostitution.
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