After previously having a viral stare-down with Sean “Diddy” Combs on The Four: Battle for Stardom, a recording artist and entertainment personality is detailing how he became a reality TV meme and faced off with “the devil.”
Elijah Connor has announced his memoir, Behind the Stare: The Price I Paid for Standing My Ground, set for release Feb. 10, 2026, via Penguin Light Publishing. The book promises an unfiltered account of the viral confrontation in The Four: Battle for Stardom, in which Connor’s prolonged, silent stare-down with judge Sean “Diddy” Combs became an instant internet obsession.
“For years, everyone has replayed that moment: the stare, the silence, the smirk,” Connor wrote on Instagram while announcing the book. “But what you saw on TV was only one second of a much bigger story… a story I’ve never told publicly.”
While the clip lives on as a popular meme, Connor says in Behind the Stare that there was professional fallout that followed from his refusal to back down.
“This wasn’t about ego. It wasn’t about a viral clip,” Connor shared. “It was about standing my ground in a room where most people fold.”
According to Connor, the experience “cost me sleep, peace, opportunities… and almost broke me.” The memoir explores what he describes as “the power, the pressure, the manipulation, the truth — and the price I paid for refusing to bow.”
Raised in Detroit and the younger cousin of the late Prince, Connor credits his family’s musical lineage with shaping his sense of identity and resolve, qualities he says were tested in the aftermath of the televised confrontation.
The tome comes after Connor recently sat down with Pastor Jamal Bryant on his podcast and called Diddy “the devil” while reflecting on the incarcerated Bad Boy mogul.
“Diddy’s the devil,” said Connor. “It’s a declaration. I’m standing on it. it’s definitely a spirit—when you’ve been operating for so long, thinking that you’re just invincible with power and you can just do whatever. You want to treat them [people] any kind of way as well as try to blackball people just from them not coming to one of your events–behind the stare.”
“He tried to break me,” he added.
Elijah Connor’s Behind The Stare will be available in hardcover, ebook, and a limited deluxe collector’s edition on February 10, 2026.
