Sean “Diddy” Combs made “one of the biggest announcements” of his life on Thursday morning.
With such a major project well underway—Revolt is set to premiere this Fall—Diddy has announced that he’ll be stepping away from putting out solo music in the near future. He tells Billboard,
“It’s an evolution for me. I think I will personally be putting out less music, and I’ll be going into that phase of empowering the next artists… I feel a musical and artistic responsibility to do one of the things I do best, which is framing people in the right way and marketing them in the right way.” He excitedly continued, “That’s just as fun, even more fun, for me.”
Discussing the network, Diddy explained that its programming will feature shows with a certain “rawness.” He clarified,
“We will not be doing a bunch of reality shows. We’ll be doing music-driven shows that will be exposing you to the discovery and curation of new talent. We’ll also be doing in-depth interviews and shows that will go into social issues with different panels and debaters of the culture…” He went on, “We’ll be going to where the pulse of music is happening, and we’ll be covering it in the way ESPN will cover a sports story, with that level of urgency and seriousness.”
The 43-year-old entrepreneur struck a carriage deal with Time Warner Cable for distribution of his next project, Revolt TV. The music-themed television network will launch this fall and will now be available to TWC customers. It was announced earlier this year that Combs also reached a deal with Comcast.
“This is a landmark distribution deal that demonstrates Time Warner Cable’s commitment to bringing a platform for music artists and fans to their subscribers,”Combs said in a statement. “It positions Revolt to come out of the gate strong, and we look forward to igniting the passion of initial audiences across the U.S.”
“When I was growing up, I was watching television all the time — I used to wonder, ‘Why don’t those people look like me, or talk like me or walk like me?’ So thank you to Comcast; my hat goes off to you for being the first to step up,” Combs said at the time of the network’s initial launch announcement. “I would also like to encourage and to invite Time Warner, DirecTV, Cable Vision and all the other distributors to come and get down with the get down. Because Revolt TV is bringing that revolution that television needs.”
The rapper/producer/actor took to Twitter on Thursday morning to publicize the news.