The Best Cribs Episode Ever

In 2001, MTV filmed an episode of Cribs that rapidly rose to cult status among hip-hop heads. Viewers expectations--the usual Cribs fare of lavish and disgustingly tacky homes—went utterly unmet. This episode is, for many, “real” hip-hop’s response to the unabashed commercialism that characterized the Bad Boy era and became a hip-hop norm. Instead of a crib along the lines of Missy Elliot’s nauseating 4,200 square foot apartment in Miami, this episode featured a 2 bedroom, 2 bath home studio in Staten Island, N.Y. That gutta, M.O.P.-esque side of hip-hop is forever enshrined in this, the gulliest Cribs episode of all time.
The crib’s owner? Redman.
“Those motherfuckers wanted me to rent a house,” Redman told me, when I brought up the episode. As it progresses, Redman shows off that New Jerz dirty shit—the fridge contains only 40’s, the basement contains his uncle, sleeping on the floor. “That really is my Uncle,” Redman told me, before introducing me to the man himself, perhaps the greatest background actor of any Cribs episode.

The episode is so ghetto that it almost seems staged. How, after all, could Redman have been asleep in bed when the cameras showed up? The whole house is so unprepared for a cribs episode—it is too perfect not to be fake. Yet Redman explains: “They were supposed to come at a certain time, like noon, and they showed up at 8 in the morning.” In the same vein, why does Redman have any house, let alone a shitty one, in Staten Island? Isn’t there a house in Brick City, perennially full of bitches and blunts? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that Redman is out there grinding. “So, I do real estate quietly, and that was one of my first projects, which is why it was like that.”