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.”
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.
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.”
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.
The record executive’s empire began to unravel in November 2023 when his ex Casandra “Cassie” Ventura filed a lawsuit accusing him of rape and physical abuse during their 10-year relationship.
Combs denied any wrongdoing and settled with the “Me & U” singer, 38, just one day later.
However, a disturbing 2016 video of Combs brutally beating Cassie surfaced online in May, forcing him to publicly apologize.
The three-time Grammy winner, who is being held at a notorious Brooklyn jail, has since been hit with a slew of lawsuits accusing him of sexual abuse, though he continues to maintain his innocence.
Shyne, for his part, was deported to his native Belize in 2009 following his release from prison, where he says he found religion.
He traveled to Israel in 2010 and became an Orthodox Jew before moving back to Belize in 2013 and reconnecting with his father, Dean Barrow, a former prime minister.
Shyne also began to get involved in politics and is now the the Leader of the Opposition in the Belize House of Representatives and the leader of the Belize United Democratic Party.
“I want to develop the GDP of Belize, $200 billion from the couple of billion that we are right now,” he says. “I want to be able to to have the opportunity … to fix our broken public health care system, you know, to be able to eradicate poverty. That’s what’s on my mind every single day. That’s all I think about.”
Shyne sees a thread running through his performing days when he would rap about the “ills of society” to becoming a leader trying to eradicate the issues of poverty and violence.
“Coming up with solutions to stop violence in Belize, to eradicate poverty in Belize, to grow the economy in Belize and to to help the young child, whether it be a young female or a young male,” he tells us, “to me, that’s that’s such a coming-of-age story. I couldn’t ask for a better pivot.”
