Who is Empire’s Luscious Lyon based on?

This was a recent unsustantiated rumor going around that Diddy wants to sue the hit show Empire and its creator Lee Daniels, which seems completely ridiculous. This fascinating nighttime soap IS, however, based on a mixture of inspirations. Is Luscious Lyon based on a real person?

Daniels has said that Lyons is a partly a representation of him, his dad, and “several celebrities that I know. He’s based on several real estate moguls that I know of African-American descent. He’s the American dream.”

And, he’s also a little bit Jay Z. Co-creator Danny Strong said Jay Z’s success and drug dealing history was a big influence on the character’s creation and backstory.. “The Jay-Z story, which very much inspired Lucious Lyon, certain elements of Lucious Lyon, was that story,” he told Sway’s Universe. “For me the story of people who have some sort of criminal past, or gangster past are not limited to black culture. Our goal is to tell a great story, and to do the best show we can. You can cross the line and just be totally inappropriate, but we’re not doing that.”