Hip hop impresario Sean “P Diddy” Combs is being sued for $300,000 by New York’s biggest publishing house for failing to write an autobiography. A lawsuit against Combs and Bad Boy Books Inc. was filed by Random House in Manhattan Supreme Court on Monday, in an effort to recover an advance payment the company gave the celebrity in 1998 to write a memoir he never delivered.

"Random House has seldom resorted to a legal course of action with its prospective authors who don't write the books we have contracted for, but Mr. Sean Combs has left us no choice," spokesman Tom Perry said in a statement.

"He signed an agreement with our Ballantine imprint in 1998 to write his autobiography, which he agreed to complete and deliver to us in 1999.

"We now have waited for over five years and have received neither the manuscript nor the return of the money we advanced Mr. Combs, the latter of which we have been seeking since 2001. We hope the court will help Mr. Combs do what is right," Reuters quoted Perry as saying.

The famous rap singer and fashion designer originally hired Mikal Gilmore, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone magazine, to help him with the book, but the two men had a quarrel and Gilmore left the project. According to The Independent, a spokesman for Combs said he was hoping for a settlement "without litigation".

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