Photo Credit: Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for Viacom
This may be one of the most highly anticipated RTT episodes to date.
T.I. and Tiny pulled up a chair to the Red Table to sit down with Jada Pinkett Smith and her mother, Adrienne Banfield-Jones to discuss the scandal now publicly referred to as “hymen-gate”. Y’all know miss Jada don’t play and they got right down to the nitty-gritty.
“When asked ‘how do I deal with parenting in this day and age?’ I began, from a place of truth, I began to embellish and exaggerate. People took it extremely literal. If you put any of my reputation about who I am as a father and who I’ve been, I honestly thought people knew me better than that.” T.I says of the comments he made in podcast interview, where he said he takes his now 18-year-old daughter to a yearly gynecologist appt to make sure her “hymen in still in-tact”. The public had a field-day and the backlash was harsh and immediate.
Jada makes it a point to remind him that the public doesn’t know him and asks if he understands the sensitivity about the nature of his comments. Tip replies with a straight-forward no. “No. I understand it now, absolutely. However, my intentions have been terribly misconstrued and misconceived,” he explains. Then continues, “Let me set this record straight. I was never in any exam room, that was an assumption, a falsity. I never said it was being done present day as an 18-year-old. I never said her mother wasn’t present.”
Tiny chimed in and said that neither Deyjah or her mother objected and that he was just basically trying to be a good father, despite public perception of him being controlling and violating her privacy as a young woman. As far as Deyjah’s take on the matter, “My daughter said just let it go,” but then adds as things got worse she told him to “make it stop” and make a statement. Deyjah has yet to speak up on the matter herself, despite unfollowing T.I. and Tiny on social media and liking suggestive tweets about them before deactivating her accounts all together.
For more on the conversation peep the clip below and then watch the full episode HERE.
