Sean “Diddy” Combs may be spending this year’s holiday season behind bars, but the hip-hop mogul is still making an impact from inside the Federal Correctional Institution Fort Dix in New Jersey.
What was expected to be a bleak Thanksgiving on November 27 turned into an unexpected moment of unity after Combs funded and helped coordinate an inmate-led feast that fed more than 1,000 prisoners, an unusual show of camaraderie inside the federal facility.
According to US Weekly, the 56-year-old partnered with an internal prison group known as the Bankroll Bosses, pooling commissary money and manpower to pull off a full Thanksgiving spread.
The group spent two days buying supplies, preparing food and distributing it across every housing unit, improvising without access to stoves, microwaves or even knives.
“Thanksgiving, to me, is about making sure other people eat,” Combs said through his rep, who spoke to US Weekly.
“Everybody misses their family. People get depressed during the holidays. We just wanted to come together as a family and do our own thing,” he added.
Combs, who is adjusting to a drastically different pace of life, said he has found a sense of brotherhood behind bars.
“There’s a strong brotherhood. We all look out for each other,” he added. “It’s like a little bit of home in a dark place.”
With staff shortages limiting the usual bare-bones holiday meal service, inmates stepped in to create something more personal.
Inmate B.I., a former gang leader involved in the preparations, described the resourcefulness behind the feast, “We have to boil water for everything,” he told TMZ.
“We used our ID cards to chop up the food. The ‘chefs’ here make it taste like grandma cooked it.”
In the end, the team cooked enough for roughly 200 inmates in each housing unit, turning Fort Dix into an unlikely scene of holiday warmth.
“We cooked the food and sent it to all the buildings,” B.I. said. “It took two days to prep everything.”