Rapper Redman's 2001 episode of MTV's "Cribs" remains one of the most talked about in the series — with some even wondering if the rapper's less-than-luxurious digs were fake — and now the show's creator and producer are coming clean.
In "An Oral History of Redman's Notorious
MTV Cribs Episode," posted last week on Thrillist.com, Redman and MTV discuss why the rapper's homely surroundings stood out from the luxurious, over-the-top homes usually featured on the show. Everything seen in the episode, they insist, was real.
The rapper's wood-frame, two-bedroom Staten Island duplex, which Redman called "De La Casa," was a far cry from the usual "Cribs" fare.
"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 . . . was a momentous outlier," Thrillist.com reported.
"Though the clip 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."
Jill Krasny of Esquire.com wrote that, even though some fans believed Redman's surroundings were fake, the episode turned out to be one of the most real ones in the entire series.
"While everybody was trying to show a lavish house, the lavish life of living, that's not always the case," Redman said in the Thrillist article. "Not every entertainer's living lavish. They may have a more lavish set on the street, but it's still real for a lot of cats out here in the entertainment game. We're okay, but we're not rich, and that's what I wanted to display to my fans . . . I always try and think about what the 'hood would say when I do things."
The episode still manages to draw a reaction online as fans responded to the oral history and the actual show.
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