🅿️aul¥ G and 999 others

Diddy offered the six members of Da Band $7,500 to sign to Bad Boy. Total. Then, on MTV, he sent them walking six hours across New York to bring back his cheesecake. In the video below, Ness, one of the six, tells it himself and does the math. "Not $75,000. Not $750,000. That's $1,250 a piece." They had won Making the Band 2. Millions watched Diddy build them on TV. The walk went from Manhattan, over the Brooklyn Bridge, to Junior's and back. "Six hours total," Ness says. The other five were ready to sign the deal as it was. Ness took it to a lawyer first, and the number went up. Their album, Too Hot for TV, went gold. Then Diddy broke up the group on the show. After the breakup came a publishing offer: $300,000, split six ways, only if all six signed. Ness refused to give up his rights. The others stayed angry with him for years. Then the taxes came. Ness says they were paraded around for "promo" that was really paid work, and the IRS seized his royalties. "I wasn't getting no royalties for 20 years," he says. "I've been in financial ruins for the whole 19 years." Six kids walked six hours for a cheesecake. One of them spent the next 19 years paying for the contract. Was Ness robbed, or did six kids from a reality show sign what they were handed? Another one tomorrow.