Sean Combs officially changed his stage name from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy in late March 2001, with the switch taking effect publicly in early June 2001.

Quick Scoop

  • On March 28, 2001, Sean Combs announced that he was retiring the name Puff Daddy and would go by P. Diddy.
  • In an MTV interview that month, he said there would be a “name change ceremony” in the first week of June and that he was “rockin’ with P. Diddy now.”
  • He had previously released his first two solo albums, No Way Out (1997) and Forever (1999), under the Puff Daddy name before making the shift.

In hip‑hop nostalgia terms, if you remember late‑’90s “Puff Daddy,” you’re thinking pre‑2001; if you remember “P. Diddy,” you’re in the early‑2000s Bad Boy era.

TL;DR: Puff Daddy became P. Diddy in 2001, with the change announced on March 28 and rolled out in early June that year.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.