In 2001, rapper Redman was the focus of an episode of MTV Cribs, which usually highlighted the luxuries that millions of dollars could buy for rappers. But Redman’s episode was something completely different. At the time, he still lived on Staten Island in a nondescript house and he insists that it was completely real.

While it has been over a decade since that episode aired, there’s still speculation that it was all just fake. But in a surprising oral history for Thrillist.com, Redman said everything was real.

There was no real furniture in the house and he was half-asleep when the Cribs crew showed up. His cousin was seen sleeping on the floor and he showed off a really tiny TV in his room. He even had wads of cash stored in a box.

Redman told Thrillist that his “De La Casa,” as he called the home, was bought as his 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 rapper said.

He said he did think of trying to show MTV a lavish lifestyle, but realized that it just wasn’t him.

“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,’” he recalled. “But then I was like, ‘F**k 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.”

As for the cousin who was sleeping on the floor, that was Mr. Cream, formerly known as Sugar Bear.

“I actually was sleeping, and I remember waking up and it was just cameras and shit in my face and they were like, ‘Sign this for me,’” Mr. Cream said. “It was some kind of release, and I was like, ‘Oh, there’s some shit going on?’ I was out, but I woke up to sign the release paper.”

MTV did a Cribs update last year with Redman, confirming that he did finally get a bigger TV and a door for his closet and “Beyonce’d the bathroom.”

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Redman, Retromania, Full Episodes

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