In a new interview, Dawn Richard said she was “threatened” to choose to join Sean “Diddy” Combs‘ Dirty Money group over Danity Kane.
“People say, ‘Oh, you chose Dirty Money over Danity Kane,’ and it’s like, no, I was bought out of a contract, and I was told I couldn’t leave,” she said. “I was threatened, but I didn’t tell everybody that. I just did what I had to do to get out of it, because I didn’t feel like that was everybody’s business.”
The singer shared this on the podcast ‘Cocoism‘ on Thursday, and also addressed her standing with Danity Kane. The artist has recently spoken about being “iced out” by the girl group, who announced their reunion tour, ‘The Unknown Chapter Tour,’ earlier this month, featuring three of its members: Aubrey O’Day, Aundrea Fimbres, and D. Woods. The group’s original members also included Richard and Shannon Bex.
Richard said she “wasn’t involved” in the decision to reunite and “that’s a choice” made by O’Day, Fimbres, and Woods.
“I wish it could be all five of us,” she said.
Danity Kane was formed in 2005 by Combs through his former reality series “Making the Band,” a competition show with a lens into the Combs’ process of discovering and developing musical acts. The group disbanded in 2009, but has reunited and reconfigured itself several times over the years. O’Day, Bex, Richard, and Fimbres brought the group back in 2014, which Fimbres later left, and in 2018, Bex, O’Day, and Richard came back. In 2020, Richard and O’Day released their own music as a duo.
Richard reacted to the news of the most recent reunion by posting on her Instagram that she was not invited to join the tour, and that she would have accepted if she had been.
“Even without being told about the reunion, I will always be a yes to Danity Kane,” she wrote in the caption. “That chapter lives in me forever. I always choose to perform these records out of love for the music, the memories, and the legacy we built together.”
Combs formed Dirty Money in 2009, with Richard and Kalenna Harper. The group released one studio album and one mixtape, ultimately disbanding in 2012. Harper is featured in the new Netflix docuseries, “Sean Combs: The Reckoning,” where she speaks about the formation of the group and her loyalty to Combs, specifically when she denied Richard’s allegations against the music mogul, which included sexual assault, kidnapping, and that she witnessed Combs’ abuse of Cassie Ventura.
Harper maintains that she did not witness the events that Richard claimed happened, but also revealed that Combs asked her to defend him against Richard, which is shown in previously unseen footage obtained by the documentary’s producers.
