As Sean “Diddy” Combs’ legal troubles continue to unfold and the allegations grow heavier by the day, one question keeps surfacing across social media timelines and group chat conversations alike: What about the babies? For many, that question most urgently concerns Combs’ young daughters, 18-year-old twins D’Lila and Jessie, who lost their mother in 2018.
Recently, Kimora Lee Simmons offered rare insight into how the girls are really doing, and more importantly, who has been holding them down.
“I have my kids, and then I have kids on the side,” Simmons said in a recent appearance on Today with Jenna & Friends.
The model-turned-mogul was a close friend of the twins’ mother, Kim Porter, who died unexpectedly in 2018 from pneumonia. Since then, they’ve also lost the daily presence of their father, who is currently serving a more than four-year federal sentence for prostitution-related charges, handed down after he was arrested in 2024 on racketeering, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution counts.
In the absence of both parents, Simmons has quietly stepped into a central maternal role for the Combs twins, explaining: “I have a stepdaughter, well, an additional daughter. I have another son, a bonus son, who’s on the show, Jaden, another one who’s just been with us for many, many years.”
“One of my friends who passed away, Kim Porter, I have all of her kids. Even though some of them are adults, but some of them are 18, twins,” she continued. “They’re with me. I just got off the phone with them.”
Now Simmons’ revelation is a testament to a mantra many Black families have honored for generations: “It takes a village” to raise children. As the Baby Phat founder noted, she’s “a lot of people’s moms.” Simmons has adult daughters, Aoki and Ming, from her previous marriage to Russell Simmons, a son, Kenzo, with her former partner Djimon Hounsou, and a son, Wolfe, with ex-husband Tim Leissner. Additionally, she adopted a son named Gary when he was 10 years old.
“I have a lot of help. It takes a village,” she continuedd. “I have godmoms and aunties and friends…It’s really a village of women. I’m supported by women.”
