Bossip previewed P. Diddy’s Nightline interview, and this sh-t is too good to pass up. ABC released a 10-minute long clip of the interview, done by Martin Bashir (below), and the whole thing is worth a watch. However, if you just want to see the part where Diddy gets defensive about his six kids, his three baby-mamas, the extravagant gifts he buys his kids (like the $300,000-plus Mayback he bought for his son‘s 16th birthday), and whether he should be considered a role model, just go to the six-minute mark and watch it get good (full Nightline article here):

Here are some of the quotes:

“Marriage for me is something that I see differently than a lot of people,” Diddy said.

“Based on what I see out here, I don’t see it as a commitment. I don’t know a lot of people that are married are happy. Ninety percent of the people that I speak to that are married are miserable. Ninety percent of the men I know that are married, they are not really as committed. … And also my background, I never grew up seeing that. … My mother never had a man around us. My father was killed when I was 3. So just based on the way what I was accustomed to, I wasn’t well-versed in that.”

I asked Diddy about what Barack Obama, then a senator, said on Father’s Day almost two years ago, about how children who grow up without a father are nine times more likely to drop out of school and 20 times more likely to end up in prison.

Might Diddy be setting a bad example, by being a man with multiple children who have multiple mothers?

“I think it depends on how you look at it,” Diddy said. “All of my kids are well taken care of. They all go to the best schools. … All of the mothers are taken care of financially, and I’m there for my children as a father.

It’s true that Diddy takes care of his family financially. For his 16th birthday, he bought his son Justin a Maybach car worth almost $400,000. Was that appropriate?

“I think its appropriate to give my kids whatever I want to give my kids,” he said. “I feel the way I raise my children, I don’t have to explain to you or anyone else, ’cause nobody knows the way I raise my children. So nobody knows the lessons that I’ve taught my children to understand, if they are mentally ready for that.”

Does he think giving a teenager such an expensive car was a valuable lesson about money?

“It wasn’t even about a lesson; it’s what I wanted to do,” he said. “I could do whatever I want to do and you can’t question me about it.”

[From Nightline]

There’s more juicy stuff earlier in the interview too, where Bashir is questioning Diddy’s street-cred, whilst simultaneously asking Diddy if he had anything to do with Tupac’s death. Diddy says: “Of course, I feel the loss of my friends… I feel the loss of Tupac … and I feel the loss of African-Americans. … Not just African-Americans, but anyone who has died with guns.”

My take? I think Diddy is a very smart businessman, and there’s nothing wrong with that, and he shouldn’t have to apologize for selling himself (or selling out) the way that he has. But what’s funny is that Diddy wants to have it all – he wants to be seen as a smart businessman, someone who hasn’t sold out at all, someone is still hardcore and “gangster” all while simultaneously putting himself out there as a nice, decent family man. Diddy, king of branding, needs some help with his own branding issues.