Inside the legendary rapper's GQ cover shoot

Diddy is known as the King of reinvention. The rapper and business mogul has been known by many names but these days prefers to be called Brother Love. Diddy sat down with GQ magazine to discuss black excellence, Biggie and why he champions the black community. Take a look inside the legendary rappers GQ cover shoot.

Diddy, who has amassed a following of over 10m, Instagram followers due to his fun and uplifting posts has become the face of black excellence alongside his close pal and fellow rapper, Jay-Z.

The two men began their lives in the hood and through sheer talent and hard work have worked hard to push themselves to the next level, so much so the two topped the Forbes list together this year as 'Hip-hop's Wealthiest Acts'.

In the cover shoot, Diddy poses in a variety of stylish outfits including a purple suit by Gucci and Ermenegildo Zegna Couture leisure jacket.

Read excerpts from the interview below:

I asked what kept him hungry.

“My culture,” he said. “I want to be an authentic, unapologetic warrior for black culture and the culture of the street and how it moves. My thing is most importantly to change the narrative of the black race. I can't relate to anything that isn't about that.”

He said he wants to develop an app that will allow users to look at a given city or neighborhood and see where the black-owned and black-friendly businesses are. He didn't want to say too much about the app. It wasn't finished. He didn't have a name for it yet.

“This is not about taking away from any other community,” he said. “We'll still go to Chinatown. We'll still buy Gucci!” He laughed. “But the application will make it possible for us to have an economic community. It's about blacks gaining economic power.”

He and Jay-Z have been talking about this, he said, about moving the race forward actively, by means of: making a lot of money and putting it back into the community. “I don't believe in passiveness,” Love said. “At some point there has to be some kind of fight. I feel like we've done a lot of marching. It's time to start charging.”

In his conversations with Jay-Z, they've been using the term “black excellence” for leaders who came forward to uplift the race by example. It was an updated incarnation of W. E. B. Du Bois's “talented tenth,” based not on class or lightness of skin tone this time but instead on getting and being extremely wealthy. And philanthropic.

“We're into psychological warfare,” he said. “The difference is, we're not trying to hurt nobody.”