Throughout the music video for “Coming Home”, by Diddy- Dirty Money, he is walking alone in a desert-like setting. He gets dropped off by a helicopter, leaving him abandoned. The only things seen in the desert, along with him, are scattered house appliances. Things like radios, tables, closet hangers, and other items are found by his side as he is walking. All of them looked destroyed from a fire of some sort. He walks through and at the end of the video is picked up by the helicopter and taken away from this dry wasteland. The music video itself contradicts the lyrics of “coming home”, and implies that Diddy is actually moving on from his prior life and following a new direction, to a new home. 

In one particular scene, P. Diddy walks past a safe that is wide open, with money pouring out of it. A normal person would probably go over and take as much as they can carry of the money just sitting there, but he just keeps walking past it. The safe looks like it was broken into. The money seems to have some burn marks on some of the bills. It is just lying there on the dry sandy ground of this desert. In the background there is also a TV set. It too looks beat down, as it has a cracked screen from a bullet hole in the middle of it.  All of this portrays a house robbery that must have happened in the previous part of Diddy’s life. These two particular motifs look discolored and old to show that it was from the past, and he walks passed them, showing that he’s moving on, and trying to forget about the bad times of getting broken in on and robbed. The ground in the background also has noticeable cracks in the dirt, just like the TV does, maybe to show the risky and problem-ridden life he lived. It was a dangerous lifestyle where he had to be careful of every move he made, like walking on broken glass. The video itself is not in black and white, but it comes off in a dull grayish color. It emphasizes the emptiness feeling that the desert also conveys, and that solitary feel shows that he is going through a rehabilitation process to forget the past. The view comes from a low angle that is zooming in on the money in the safe, as he walks past it in the back. The ground level camera angle shows Diddy higher, or above, the safe full of money. It’s showing him physically above the money, but signifying he is mentally above it too. He’s better than only caring about cash now. He’s grown more mature.

Later in the video, continuing his strides, Diddy walks by a car. The car is destroyed. It looks burnt to crisp, with windows shattered and doors smashed. The inside of it is similarly crushed and beat up, as though it had been in a horrible accident. Again it is on his walk through the desert, so the ground is still cracked within the sandy dirt. It is just an abyss of emptiness, with nothing but far away mountains in the background, with some smoke as well maybe from the sand. Diddy is wearing all black, just as the car is all black from how burnt it is. He seems to stop at the car for a second and gives it more thought than he did with the safe and TV as he just marched right passed those. He stands at the car for a second, and then walks away with his hand on his head and takes a last look back at it. Diddy was once in a similar looking car with rapper Biggie Smalls, when he was shot and killed by a car that pulled up. Biggie and Diddy were great friends and co-workers for Diddy’s production company. This is why Diddy is wearing all black in the video. To pay respect, as you do at a funeral by wearing black. The destruction to the car represents the great opportunities that were destroyed when Biggie was taken. Clearly this is more emotional for Diddy to let go of, as he pauses for a moment by the car and looks back at it to remember. 

The lyrics help to contribute to the theme of moving on as well. In one verse, Diddy says, “Lot of fights, lot of scars, lot of bottles, lot of cars, lot of ups, lot of downs...but here I stand a better man”. You can see through all of the objects he passes in the desert, he had some great and expensive tangibles. With all of the success he was having, he was living a lavish lifestyle with the best cars and drinking the most expensive bottles of alcohol. However even with these great highs, he reached some very deep lows. Getting into fights that lefts “scars”. Whether he is talking about physical or metaphorical scars, it seems like he wishes he can take back the actions he did back then and grow from them, which he does. 

Although the lyrics read “I’m coming home”, it is not necessarily about Diddy returning back to where he was before. It is about him leaving the life he once lived in the limelight, where all he did was party and care about business. It was a dangerous lifestyle that had people robbing him and kill his friend, and almost killing him. He is done with the tangible goods that once meant everything to him. In order to move on and mature as a man, he needed to remember what he has been through and let go. He passes by so many of the parts and memories of that time of his life, to remember where he once was, but looks forward to where he is going. He’s coming home to the simpler times he once had, before the limelight. He wants to be a better man now, so he is leaving his once important possessions behind. 
