In a Q&A with the New York Times Sunday Magazine, Diddy, the multi-hyphenated mogul and embodiment of Black Excellence, finally addressed the photograph above, taken in 2009 at a Knicks-Cavaliers game.
Unsurprisingly, the photo went viral because the idea of Diddy looking genuinely befuddled at finding a $1 bill among his stack of $100s was a good internet joke back then (and still is). Diddy, after all, is synonymous with massive wealth — perfectly represented in the photo by his courtside seats and the aforementioned cash stack — and to find something that’s technically money but not at the level that he’s used to in his person simply does not compute. He knows it and we know it.
So naturally, when asked what he was thinking when that photo was snapped, Diddy confirmed our suspicions, right? LOL not even.
“I love a $1 bill! I just make weird faces sometimes.”
Yep, it turns out we all read too much into it. Diddy was just making a face like we all unknowingly do during the course of the day. There’s no deeper meaning to it. Sometimes a picture of a dude counting his money is nothing more than a picture of a dude just counting his money.