May 6, 2015

MTV’S “MTV CRIBS” USED WITH PERMISSION BY MTV. ©2015 VIACOM MEDIA NETWORKS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. MTV, ALL RELATED TITLES, CHARACTERS AND LOGOS ARE TRADEMARKS OWNED BY VIACOM MEDIA NETWORKS, A DIVISION OF VIACOM INTERNATIONAL INC.
PUBLISHED ON 4/30/2015

BY CHRIS FARAONE

@fara1

• SHAREON FACEBOOK

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 s---” and dressing “bummy for low profile.”

All of which made him the least likely subject imaginable whenCribs 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 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’ a---” 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: A lot of times we would make these wish lists of people and reach out. I don’t know how Redman came about, but the image was sort of like we go to these homes, these big homes of athletes and this palatial stuff, and with the Redman one we were like, “How is this going to pan out?” It wasn’t the prototype of what we were thinking.

Redman, rapper, actor, blunt-roller: It was just a phone call... It didn’t take a publicist, it didn’t take anybody to twist my arm to do it. I have a good relationship with MTV through the years.

Diaz: Redman had the chops, the originality to want to really show how he lived. Other people would wait until they got this ballerific place to let us in because they had watched all these other ones like Master P, who was living in a gold Louisiana mansion. People saw that and they would say, “I’m not ready... You have to give me another year. I have to make some more bank.”

Redman: While everybody was trying to show a lavish house, the lavish life of living, that’s not always the case. 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.

Diaz: What was so genius about Redman was that he was like, “Let them come.” He wanted to show us where he lives. He wasn’t afraid of it.

Redman: It was supposed to be my first real-estate project. I bought the place for real cheap, and I was going to fix it up and rehab it and put it back on the market. But I ended up keeping it because I just loved the space, and I loved the seclusion of it.

The Arrival
Diaz: We didn’t know exactly what we were getting into. We knew we were going out to Staten Island, which was kind of like uncharted territory other than going there for something for Wu-Tang. So we drove, and honestly he lives very far, it’s like the boondocks. I was like, “Where are we going? Where does this man live?” And then we were like, “This is it? We must have the wrong place.” Then it was like, “Holy s---, this is where he lives.”
Dawn Reinholtz, unit manager and camera operator: It was definitely different. Usually we’ll set up in a garage or something, because you have all the audio equipment as well. I think we set up in the kitchen, though, because I don’t believe he had a garage. And you couldn’t even ring the doorbell.

Diaz: It was clearly cold, too, because I remember how hard it was to rub the wires together to get the doorbell to ring.

Redman: They show up f---ing early. I wanted to at least clean up a bit, since I ain’t have any real furniture in there and s---, and I thought I had a little bit of time and I didn’t. When they knocked on the door I was still sleepy-eyed and they were like, “You know what, this is good, let’s just roll with it. You just get back into bed and we’ll make it like we just disturbed you,” and we played it right on out from there. Not too much setup, not too much dialogue to go over. We just winged it.

Reinholtz: It was rather early in the morning, so for him it was waking up.

Mr. Cream, Redman’s cousin, formerly known as Sugar Bear: I remember going to the studio the night before, and I fell asleep and s---... I don’t know if someone gave him the word or not, but he’s not that type of person anyway who would redecorate [for MTV] -- he’s just like, "I am what I am." He’s always been like that.

Clarke: They did not clean this place; they did not care.

Redman: It was still in the process of being rehabbed.

The Tour
Diaz: You never knew what you were getting into. We didn’t case the joint. Each time people opened the door, and that was how they received us. It was a surprise, and [Redman] showed us around -- there were dishes in the sink, pizza boxes everywhere, a piggy bank, his bedroom is a mess. He was quite proud of it, and it was so refreshing because everyone in hip-hop is so style-conscious.
Redman: They wanted to display the inside of an artist’s home, his household. That’s a sacred space -- your home.

Reinholtz: Cribs always had two cameras. One is Steadicam that the talent would actually talk to. And then you’d have a second handheld camera, which gets all of the B-roll. It was tight because of the nature of the staircase and trying to get those cameras in.

Redman: You have to understand, my space is small. My space don’t even have a back door -- there’s one way in, and there’s one way out. Seeing everyone from MTV in my little-a--- condo was crazy... When they were recording I was like, "This s--- is really going down."

Diaz: He wanted to go into detail about everything like his flatscreen TV and the videos, the method to his madness. His took just as long as Master P's mansion.

Toni Ann Carabello, editor: He played into the whole thing, like taking his shoebox of money down from the top of the refrigerator.

Reinholtz: It’s a lot of dodging with someone who is as animated as he is. You have to jump behind couches and walls and doors, because if they turn around fast you want that spontaneity, but you don’t want to ruin the shot.

Redman: When they were in there filming, I did have a moment of thinking, “I don’t want to show that my city can’t live the good and lavish life too.” But then I was like, “f--- it, this isn’t about nobody else but me. I invited these guys to my house and now I got to go with it.” This is just something that we do. Everything you see was real. It’s just everyday life for us