In the trailer for the new season of T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle, the show teases that fans will get a look at what happened behind-the-scenes during the so-called hymen-gate controversy. Now, ahead of the April 13 premiere, Tameka “Tiny” Harris, 44, is revealing that people don’t really know the “full story” surrounding her husband T.I.’s comments about his daughter Deyjah’s gynecology visits. “[There] was a reason behind that,” Tiny tells HollywoodLife EXCLUSIVELY about the rapper’s claim that he attends the 18-year-old’s annual appointment “to check her hymen.” “It wasn’t just like, ‘Oh, I just want to wake up and find out what she’s got going on.’ So, I think people just don’t know [the] full story and still don’t know the full story and that is something the family will keep to ourselves.”
That said, the VH1 series will explore the fallout that followed T.I.’s appearance on the Ladies Like Us podcast. During the Nov. 5, 2019 episode, the 39-year-old rapper responded to a question by the hosts Nazanin Mandi and Nadia Moham about whether or not he has had the “sex talk” with his daughters. T.I. – whose real name is Clifford Harris Jr. – said he had, adding, “Not only have we had the conversation. We have yearly trips to the gynecologist to check her hymen.” The reality TV star’s comments set off a firestorm and a backlash that the couple addressed during an appearance on the Red Table Talk with Jada Pinkett Smith a couple of weeks later.
Tiny admits that she was initially surprised by the backlash that her husband received. “I really didn’t know what the story was at first, because I didn’t know that he went with her that one time and things turned out to be great,” she says. Of the fierce criticism that T.I. received, she says, “But Tip is strong enough to take the backlash, so it’s OK… We went through it and we’re past that now.”
When it comes to weathering storms in their relationship Tiny and T.I. – who have a total of seven children between them – have overcome a lot, including infidelity. It’s that experience that Tiny is using to help guide her girlfriend and Friends & Family Hustle co-star LeToya Luckett, 39, who faces her own marital problems with husband Tommicus Walker, 38, this season. “I just told her that I felt like counseling was a great help for me and Tip,” she says. “[Anytime] that we went to counseling we could understand each other better. We knew how to deal with each other in different ways that we didn’t before…so it helped us a lot. I was just telling her that you should definitely [go] because a marriage is like a full-time job and it’s the hardest in the first three years.”
When it comes to her relationship Tiny has a simple explanation for why she and T.I. have managed to stay together. “[There’s] a lot of love there,” she says. “There’s no mistaking…when you see the chemistry, it’s just is what it is…. We’ve always stayed attracted to each other and, you know, we feel like it’s worth fighting for. So that’s how we’re still here today. We’re both fighting.” T.I. & Tiny: Friends & Family Hustle returns to VH1 on April 13 at 9pm ET/PT.