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      What to Know as Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Sex Trafficking Trial Begins in NYC

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      The music mogul known as Puffy and Diddy is facing federal charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking. He has pleaded not guilty.Jury selection for Sean Combs’s federal criminal trial began this week, and opening statements from prosecutors and Mr. Combs’s lawyers are slated for Monday.The trial is being held at the Federal District Court in Lower Manhattan and is expected to last eight weeks. Here’s a primer on the charges and what’s at stake for the music mogul.Who is Sean Combs?Mr. Combs, 55, is one of the most successful producers and entrepreneurs in the history of hip-hop, who helped make artists like the Notorious B.I.G. and Mary J. Blige into household names. Under the name Puff Daddy, he had a No. 1 smash of his own in 1997 with “I’ll Be Missing You,” a tribute to B.I.G. that sampled the 1980s band the Police. He dated Jennifer Lopez, threw glittery parties in the Hamptons and was a gossip-column fixture for decades.Music was just one part of what became a multifaceted empire for Mr. Combs. He entered the fashion business in 1998 with his Sean John line, which remained hugely popular for years. His MTV reality show “Making the Band” made him a regular TV presence in the 2000s. Later, he founded a media company, Revolt, and promoted the popular vodka brand Ciroq through a deal with the spirits giant Diageo. At one point, his net worth was estimated as high as $1 billion.Mr. Combs has long been accused of violence or serious misconduct, but largely avoided serious consequences as his career ascended. Among those incidents: a charity basketball game in 1991, where nine young people were crushed to death in a stampede (Mr. Combs paid about $750,000 in private settlements). The beating of a rival music executive in his office in 1999 (Mr. Combs attended a one-day anger management course). The threatening of a choreographer on “Making the Band” in 2007 (the two reconciled, and no criminal charges were brought).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Theo Von, Andrew Schulz, Joe Rogan: A ‘Manosphere’ Just Asking Questions

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      Subscribe to Popcast!Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTubeSo long Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert? The next generation of celebrity interviewers has emerged, auguring their eventual replacement. On YouTube, a wave of comedians-turned-podcasters, many of them immature verging on boorish, have created a new media mainstream, where actors, musicians and crucially, politicians, sit for loose, extended conversations that are quickly becoming the new norm.Some of the best known of these new chatters are Theo Von, Andrew Schulz and Joe Rogan. Loosely, they’re part of the so-called “manosphere,” a set of social media figures who tilt rightward. But really, they’re a more diverse lot, with varying strengths, interests and politics.On this week’s Popcast, a conversation about the generation of male comedians who have remade themselves as the interlocutors of the day, how politicians have weaponized them for their purposes, and how they’re reshaping how celebrity is approaching the post-monoculture landscape.Guest:Dan Adler, a staff writer at Vanity FairConnect With Popcast. Become a part of the Popcast community: Join the show’s Facebook group and Discord channel. We want to hear from you! Tune in, and tell us what you think at popcast@nytimes.com. Follow our host, Jon Caramanica, on Twitter: @joncaramanica.Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. More

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      André 3000 Drops Surprise Album After Met Gala Piano Statement

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      The rapper and musician’s miniature Steinway teased his new album, “7 piano sketches,” which he released on Monday.It can be a challenge to make an impression on the Met Gala’s red carpet, especially when the competition includes Diana Ross wearing a feathered overcoat with an 18-foot-long train, Bad Bunny toting a bag fit for a bowling ball, and Rihanna arriving fashionably late — with a baby bump.But there are spectacles and there are spectacles, and André 3000 fit nicely into the latter category when he showed up to the festivities on Monday night with a grand piano strapped to his back.“I’m sorry,” the actress Natasha Lyonne said while being interviewed on the red carpet, “there’s a piano coming.”It was a statement piece and a nifty bit of marketing by André 3000, a rapper and musician whose appearance at the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute Benefit coincided with the release of his new album, “7 piano sketches,” which he described in an Instagram post as “improvisations” and included a drawing of himself in a version of his Met Gala outfit. The instrumental piano album follows one in which he focused entirely on the flute — a sharp departure from his days in the rap duo Outkast.Beyond the promotion of his new album, his outfit on Monday was carefully planned, both to highlight the event’s theme, which centered on Black style and dandyism, and its dress code, “Tailored For You.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Soprano Patricia Racette to Lead Opera Theater of St. Louis

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      Patricia Racette, who has a recent history of performing in and directing productions with the company, will begin as its artistic director this fall.The soprano Patricia Racette has performed on some of the world’s biggest stages, but she has long felt a special connection to Opera Theater of St. Louis, where she made her debut in 1993.Now Racette, 59, will deepen her ties to St. Louis: She will lead Opera Theater as its next artistic director, the company announced on Tuesday.Racette, who has directed productions for the company and overseen its young artist program for six years, said she was excited by the challenge of working to keep opera fresh and relevant.“It feels like a very natural evolution for me,” she said. “I feel we all have a stake in this.”She begins her tenure in October and will succeed James Robinson, who departed last year to lead Seattle Opera as general and artistic director.Racette said she would build on Opera Theater’s reputation for experimentation. The company, founded in 1976, has given the premiere of works like Terence Blanchard’s “Fire Shut Up in My Bones,” which later became the first work by a Black composer to be presented by the Metropolitan Opera. She said that she hoped to work with a variety of contemporary composers, including Kevin Puts, Jonathan Dove and Missy Mazzoli.“I have a perspective and passion for new works, and I’m going to enjoy applying that perspective and passion again on the other side of the curtain,” she said.Racette, who made her debut at the Met in 1995, is known for her portrayals of Puccini heroines. She has also ventured into other genres, including cabaret, which she said she hoped to bring to St. Louis. She said opera companies should not fear crossover repertoire.“These are our stories and traditions,” she said. “It’s an opportunity for accessibility, relevance and impact.”Many opera companies, including Opera Theater of St. Louis, are grappling with rising costs and the lingering effects of the pandemic. The company has benefited from a robust endowment, which is currently valued at about $100 million, and is exploring building a new home at the former headquarters of a shoe company in Clayton, a suburb of St. Louis. (Its theater is in another suburb, Webster Groves.)Racette said she was not daunted by financial challenges.“We’re just going to have to get more creative,” she said. “The arts in troubling times are more important than ever.” More

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      ‘Giants of the Earth’ Opera Returns at Last in South Dakota

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      The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra is making a fresh case for Douglas Moore’s “Giants in the Earth,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning but long obscure opera.After the mayor issued a musical proclamation, and after Norway’s ambassador to the United States gave a speech about her country’s far-reaching history in the Midwest, Jennifer Teisinger, the executive director of the South Dakota Symphony Orchestra, came out with a look of pleasant surprise, and more than a little pride.“How many orchestras,” she asked from the stage of Mary W. Sommervold Hall in Sioux Falls, “have the mayor and the ambassador of Norway onstage for the same concert?”True, orchestral concerts don’t usually get that kind of attention. But on a recent Saturday evening, the South Dakota Symphony was offering something extraordinary enough to warrant it: the first performance of Douglas Moore’s opera “Giants in the Earth” in over 50 years.An adaptation of O.E. Rolvaag’s novel, a Midwestern classic about Norwegian immigrants who settle near present-day Sioux Falls in the late 19th century, Moore’s opera premiered in 1951, quickly won the Pulitzer Prize for music, then practically disappeared. It was never recorded, and the full score was never published. A revised version was performed at the University of North Dakota a couple of decades later. But that, too, came and went with little notice or consequence.Before the South Dakota Symphony’s concerts last month, “Giants” hadn’t been heard since then. In Sioux Falls, it has been painstakingly restored, with a recording on the way and its manuscript score engraved at last, ready for publication. Delta David Gier, the orchestra’s transformative music director, has referred to the opera as “a diamond on the side of the road.” Now, it’s more like a gemstone on display.Even so, will people notice it? “Giants” is far from perfect, but in style and subject matter is American opera in its essence: a grand, dramatic treatment of the promise and agony of this country’s melting-pot identity, as precarious and unresolved for immigrants in the 19th century as it is now.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Turnstile, Hardcore Punk’s Breakout Band, Can’t Be Contained

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      On a nostalgic drive through Turnstile’s Baltimore hometown last month, the band’s workaholic frontman, Brendan Yates, pointed out an empty lot that looked like the eroded remnants of a loading dock where the band once played a show. A few days later, on a giant stage in the California desert, Charli XCX proclaimed it would be a “Turnstile Summer” on a huge screen during her Coachella set.Over the past 15 years, Turnstile has blown up from local hardcore heroes to one of the most popular punk bands of its era. Though the group emerged from a world of aggressive music, it cycles through genres — dream-pop, alternative rock — often over the course of one song. That chaos, along with a striking emotional depth, is in its ethos.“There is something exciting about being able to make music in a way where there’s no formula, there’s no expectation,” Yates, 36, said. The band’s 2021 album, “Glow On,” propelled it from the upper echelons of the underground into a dramatically larger landscape that included TV commercials, Grammy nominations and a spot opening for Blink-182’s arena tour. With a new album, “Never Enough,” due June 6, Turnstile is pushing its sound further, and the stages are set to get even bigger, leading to an inevitable question: Can the group retain its magic (and its mission) as it grows?In the late afternoon, four of the band’s five members jammed into the guitarist Pat McCrory’s car for a drive soundtracked by a Robert Palmer deep cut and a lot of sighs about the ongoing gentrification of Baltimore. They stopped at Red Thorn Tattoo, and were surprised to find it closed. Yates, McCrory, the drummer Daniel Fang and the bassist Franz Lyons, outfitted in a selection of hoodies and baseball caps, peered through the window. (Meg Mills, a new addition who plays guitar, was back home in the United Kingdom.)Fang, 35, whose soft-spoken, slight presence belies his ferocity as a drummer, explained that over a decade ago, the storefront was a music venue known as the Charm City Art Space that hosted hardcore shows. When he was in high school, he was inadvertently shoved to the ground while moshing there, leaving him bloody and with a chipped tooth. In spite of that — or possibly because of it — he had a great time. His mother panicked when she picked him up, then was “overjoyed” that he’d found his people. Fang relayed this origin story as though he were a pastor outlining the moment he found religion. For him, the seeds that would grow into Turnstile had been sown.Hardcore, an outgrowth of 1980s punk rock with screamed vocals and screeching guitars, is an apt mirror for young adulthood — a limbo stage that is fertile ground for creative expression. The genre’s overarching ethos is one of self-determination, and its underground nature breeds a do-it-yourself mind-set that often follows hardcore fans well into their adult lives.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs’s Sex Trafficking Trial Begins Jury Selection

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      Mr. Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. Potential jurors were asked about their exposure to details of the accusations.Jury selection started on Monday in the federal trial of Sean Combs, which is expected to last well into the summer.The judge overseeing the case, Arun Subramanian, questioned potential jurors gathered at Federal District Court in Manhattan about what they have seen and read about the accusations against the high-profile defendant, whose alleged misdeeds have been nearly inescapable in the news and on social media for the past year and a half. He has pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and sex trafficking.Many of the potential jurors said they had been exposed to the case: on a television at the gym, through “water-cooler talk” among co-workers, via a comedian making jokes on Instagram. That exposure was not necessarily disqualifying as long as the potential jurors — who are not being identified by name — said they could decide the case based only on the evidence they saw in court.“You understand that Mr. Combs is presumed innocent?” Judge Subramanian asked one potential juror, who said she had heard about the case on the radio and had been aware of Mr. Combs’s music and celebrity since the 1990s.“Absolutely,” she replied.Mr. Combs has been accused by the government of running a criminal enterprise that is responsible for facilitating a pattern of crimes over two decades, including sex trafficking, kidnapping, arson and drug violations. Prosecutors have accused Mr. Combs of coercing four women into sex, including his former girlfriend Casandra Ventura, who is expected to be a star witness in the trial.The music mogul’s lawyers have said that the sex at the center of the government’s case was consensual.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Jury to Decide if He Led an Entourage or a Criminal Enterprise

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      Selection of jurors is to begin Monday in a federal case that accuses the music mogul of deploying his employees to help him commit crimes.Running the life of Sean Combs has long involved a large retinue of employees, including security guards, personal assistants, household staff and higher-ranking supervisors.At the music mogul’s trial on charges of racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking, the jury will be confronted with the question of whether Mr. Combs led a typical celebrity entourage or, as prosecutors will argue, a criminal enterprise responsible for enabling years of sexual exploitation and other crimes.The selection of that jury begins on Monday as prosecutors and defense lawyers work to choose a 12-member panel for a sprawling case that will put much of Mr. Combs’s life on trial and focus particular scrutiny on the conduct of his employees over two decades.The government says employees set up hotel rooms, procured drugs and arranged for male prostitutes ahead of what prosecutors have described as “drug-fueled coercive sex marathons.” They paid women to keep them under Mr. Combs’s financial control, investigators say, and when Mr. Combs became violent, they managed the aftermath.“They facilitated the cover up of those assaults,” prosecutors wrote of Mr. Combs’s staffers in court papers, “by helping the defendant bribe witnesses, arranging treatment for the victims, secreting the victims away from the public until their injuries healed, and contacting victims in the aftermath of the defendant’s assaults.”In a search of Mr. Combs’s home in Miami, prosecutors said, law enforcement seized firearms and ammunition, including two AR-15s with defaced serial numbers in his bedroom closet.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More