By Status Ain't Hood Staff
•
August 11, 2025
A high-profile publishing dispute has erupted between R&B singer Al B. Sure! and Simon & Schuster over the content of his upcoming memoir, Do You Believe Me Now?. The book was initially set to reveal explosive claims about music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs, including Sure!’s belief that Diddy may have been connected to his 2022 coma. Announced in May ahead of Combs’ trial, the memoir has now been pulled from the publisher’s website, removed from Amazon’s preorder listings, and delayed to an improbable release date of Dec. 31, 2050. Sure!’s attorney, Robert J. Hantman, says “creative differences” about how much the book should focus on Diddy are at the heart of the standoff. Sure! and Diddy’s history dates back to the early 1990s at Uptown Records, where Sure! was a top star and Combs was an intern. Sure! was once married to Kim Porter, who later became Diddy’s longtime partner and the mother of three of his children. The singer has been among Combs’ most vocal critics amid the rapper’s ongoing sexual assault allegations, publicly questioning the official account of Porter’s 2018 death and linking his own near-fatal health crisis to Combs. Simon & Schuster’s initial press release promised a memoir that would chronicle Sure!’s medical ordeal, his relationship with Porter, and “shocking ties to Sean Combs.” Hantman has suggested that outside forces may have played a role in the book’s sudden shelving, hinting at possible interference to suppress its claims. He says they may enlist private investigator Bo Dietl to look into the matter. Meanwhile, sources have claimed industry insiders treat Sure! with caution, describing him as “mentally unstable,” an assertion Hantman strongly rejects. Combs has never publicly commented on Sure!’s allegations, and the future of the memoir remains uncertain.