An Oral History Of Redman's Notorious MTV Cribs Episode
It’s rare, but sometimes less is more in hip-hop. That’s always been the case for Redman, who appears literally covered in dirt on his second and third album covers, and who has spun a career out of rhymes about “grimy shit” and dressing “bummy for low profile.”
All of which made him the least likely subject imaginable when Cribs premiered on MTV in 2000. Next to the shameless bourgeois excess of his rap contemporaries like Jermaine Dupri and Master P, both of whom made appearances on the show, Red’s duplex in the farthest reaches of Staten Island -- “De La Casa,” as he calls it -- was a momentous outlier. Though the clip (check out the best parts from it at the bottom of this article, in the MTV update -- he now has a "larger" TV and a door on his closet!!) first aired in 2001, it remains burned into the collective pop culture consciousness, along with its images of his gold plaques covered in soiled laundry.
Yet there's been speculation over the years that the whole thing was faked. So we decided to settle matters once and for all, and called everyone involved. The verdict: it was real. And as the show’s creators, and Red himself, and his cousin, explain below, it took hip-hop’s proudest “stankin’ ass” to show everybody that a sense of humor trumps a platinum bidet any day, and that even in the land of gilded ballers, there’s still room for a funny dude who keeps his cash inside a shoebox to be king.
The Genesis
Nina L. Diaz, vice president of MTV News and Documentaries; Cribs creator and executive producer: Cribs was a new show. We started with a very informal in-house talk about, "Hey, let’s try to do this," and at the time everyone thought it would be impossible because no one was going to let people peek into their lives that way.Erika Clarke, producer: Initially it was hard asking if you could go into someone’s house. Rappers and athletes were way more into doing it because of the culture of, "Look at what we have."
Diaz: Cribs was very grassroots... This is a little bit before VH1 exploded with all of the celeb reality shows. A lot of what we were doing was more in the bucket of MTV News, where you cover a celebrity and do a sit-down interview about their album. You didn’t really get into the reality of their life.
Clarke: After ones like Redman happened it was easier to get people to agree to be on the show, and for them to realize they could do whatever they wanted to.
Diaz: This is one of the most infamous, most cited Cribs. All of the opulence and lavishness we saw -- Babyface’s house, which is just sprawling -- still, people always ask about Redman.
Reinholtz: He was definitely one of the funnier ones. He invited me to come back anytime I needed to hide from any boyfriends.
Clarke: I’m going to be 90 years old and they’ll still be asking about it.
Redman: They say it’s definitely the best one ever. People coming up to me about this just encourages me to make solid decisions all the way down. They said it was the highest-rated. To me, it means it worked for me. It taught me a lesson to stick to my guns, and to be true to myself. Don’t be somebody you’re not; don’t do things that’s not you.
Mr. Cream: When we go out on the road and do shows, and I rock on stage, my cousin will be like, “Yo, who remembers my episode of MTV Cribs? You remember that guy who was asleep on the floor?” And then I come out, and the crowd goes crazy because they know who I am from that. It’s wonderful for me, and it wasn’t even something that was supposed to happen. — Chris Faraone | Thrillist
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