Karina’s Capsule: DiddyTV

In terms of sheer hilarity –– intentional and otherwise –– most celebrity web video efforts have nothing on DiddyTV, the frequently updated YouTube dispatch from actor/hip-hop mogul/chameleon of nomenclature Sean Combs. His YouTube channel offers a lot of what you’d expect –– music videos, clips from talk show appearances, footage of the star accepting his bought-and-paid for Hollywood Walk of Fame star. But recently, Diddy has begun to speak to his audience in a much more intimate manner, through a webcam production called Diddy Blog.

Diddy Blog is a relatively new development –– the first episode premiered about a month ago –– but Diddy has been using YouTube to express himself for almost two years. Episodes of DiddyTV incorporate everything from motivational speaking (advice to his young fans: “Get off the computer and do something, motherf***ers.”) to infomercials (shilling a line of “No B*tch Ass Ness” T-shirts, Diddy warns fans away from counterfeits: “The bootleggers are B*tch Ass!”). But throughout all of this, the real reason for the non-super fan to watch DiddyTV is Diddy’s questionably conscious self-parody. This guy is obviously in love with his larger than life persona; sometimes he seems to be merely drunk on it, but other times he appears to be winking at it. The best moments are those when you honestly can’t tell whether he’s winking or indulging.

Diddy Blog episodes seem less geared toward maintaining the Diddy persona. The first episode is almost completely free of the grandstanding to which DiddyTV followers have become accustomed. Aside from a brief, low-key shout-out towards the end, it’s basically just two minutes of Diddy playing in a park with his twin toddlers. But if, on first view, the blogs seem unquestionably sincere, they eventually come off as calculated efforts to sell Diddy’s “realness,” despite (or maybe partially because) most episodes begin with Mr. Combs chanting, “Diddy Blog! Diddy Blog, bitches!”

The star began his turn toward confession with a video in May in which Diddy credited Kanye West with restoring his faith in hip hop; it was, apparently, a completely heartfelt sentiment, which Diddy repeats in Diddy Blog #3 –– “I was just speaking my mind, keeping it all the way real” –– and then extends similar compliments to Lil’ Wayne.

But even in the midst of this turn towards sincerity, there are still moments of unexpected comedy, and they almost always stem from Diddy’s reversion back to a celebration of his own wealth and status. After spending almost four minutes praising other rappers, at the end of #3 Diddy draws the audience’s attention to an ornately framed piece of art forming the backdrop for the shot. “Y’all see that motherf***in’ painting behind me? This is just how I live.” In the most recent episode, an appraisal of Hancock and a deeply felt (if not quite accurate) lament for a lack of black superheroes, Diddy stops to nod toward a figure who has popped into the top corner of the frame. “That’s my white boy answering the phone.”

With Diddy Blog, the star is channeling his self-promotion instinct into the form through which his presumed audience of young fans is talking to each other. Like web mogul Jason Calacanis, who puts his every move online in order to feed a “JasonNation” likely made up in equal parts by admirers and the amused, Diddy addresses an audience of both fans and haters with the intimacy usually reserved for trusted friends, without ever letting us completely forget that, as a star and as a millionaire, at the end of the day he is not “one of us” but on a plane above.