Tameka "Tiny" Harris Talks To Vibe About Family, Marriage & Life Without Tip

Mrs. Tameka "Tiny" Harris spoke to VIBE Magazine about she and Tip's real life Brady Bunch (which she calls The Harris Bunch), their relationship and how she's dealing with his absence.

LIFE WITHOUT TIP:

“It’s been like a roller coaster. Tip came home at the end of ’09, around Christmas time last year, and it was about getting the family back together.” But his career demanded attention, and he soon began work on his seventh album, No Mercy, as well as his third movie role [Takers]. “He started going back to work, so we was back to our regular schedule,” she recalls. “And then we got married. That was the high of the year, and then three months later he was gone—back again.”

BEING A RAP STAR’S WIFE:

“I’ve been with him before he was all of that, and once he became this big sex symbol... I understood what was going to come with it because I had already been in the business,” she says. Tiny and T.I. began dating in 2001; and they’ve learned to adapt to the stresses of a showbiz relationship. “I’m just comfortable in my position and where I stand and what our values are,” says Tiny. “We’re on the same page. Plus, understand I’m with him maybe 85, 95 percent of the time. A lot of times, while all of the attention is going down, I’m right there. I never have to tell someone to back off. Normally he does it first. If it gets that far, he never lets it get disrespectful.”

FAMILY LIFE:

“I call it the Harris Bunch,” she says, laughing. “I have my daughter, Zonnique, which is the oldest, she’s 14, and she’s real mild-mannered. My next child, Messiah, he’s 10, he’s like the game boy. Then you have Domani, he’s 9. He’s very good with his hands, very crafty. He can build anything. Then I have Deyjah, she’s also 9. Nobody in the house really messes with her. Then I have King, he’s the monster of the group. He’s my 6-year-old. I don’t know, he’s a real mixture of me and his dad. Very manipulative. He can manipulate his way out of whatever. They say that about me, too.” She flashes a knowing smile. “Then we have Major, which is the 2-year-old. He’s the rough one.”

THE HONEYMOON THAT NEVER WAS:

“We didn’t really get a chance to go on a honeymoon, because he had to go to work three days after the wedding,” she says. They flew to Los Angeles for the premiere of Tip’s film Takers, and made plans for a honeymoon. “We were just enjoying life. The day that we got caught in California, when the incident happened, we were supposed to be going to the Virgin Islands, because he can’t really go a lot of places, so we had to find somewhere where we could just go. But they were having a hurricane and we weren’t able to go. And when I think back, I’m just like, ‘Why wasn’t we there? Because if we were, we wouldn’t be having this trouble right now. But you know, things happen for a reason. It is what it is.”

Check MORE DISH for behind the scenes pics at the Harris house

Source: VIBE

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How Tiny Hooked Tip...

While there are many fans of Tiny and Tip's relationship (including me), there are also those that ask "why in the hell did he choose Tiny."  Well, Mrs. Harris told Vibe.com how the two met and how they ended up as Mr. and Mrs. 

T.I. always says I gave him such a hard time when we first met and I did... I stood him up a couple times.

When I met him, I was kinda on hiatus, I'd broken from Xscape, but I had co-wrote the song "No Scrubs" for TLC, so you know, I was living good and doing my thing and I met him in the mall, well, I had met him before in the studio. I was working with Jazzy Pha one time and he came in and I also had heard from a guy, KP, who signed him. He played some of his music for me one time and I was like, he’s a hot artist, I like him.

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Then I saw him in the mall and we conversed a little bit and I had my daughter with me and somehow we exchanged numbers and later on that evening, before I could leave the mall we was on the phone, and I was like, 'OK, so you wanna grab something to eat?' We went to this little $3 cafe right around the corner with my little girl and we just sat there kickin' it. And from then on, he was calling me and calling me, wanting to come hook up and I’d be like, 'Yeah, we gon...let’s hook up, such and such' and then I wouldn’t answer the phone and he’d be like, 'You know time after time.'

So finally I let him come by, but I still wasn’t sure because I felt like ‘Oh, he’s a baby’ and I treated it like that and he kinda felt like, 'You trying to play me like I’m a little boy.’ And one night, and it’s probably the best thing he could’ve did, he invited me to one of his shows and it was at The Bounce on Bankhead, and I went to the show, and first of all, it was jam-packed outside, it was crazy and I’m like, 'All these people here for this guy?' We went in there and he tore the house down. And I was like, 'OK, I think I like him.' [Laughs] He’s got something there

How sweet... I heard Tiny has always been down for her man. Of course we still see that today, they are the for real "Bonnie and Clyde."

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More With Mashonda.. VIBE Interview Part 2

 

Mashonda dished a whole lot of info about this whole Swizz/Mashonda/Alicia situation in the first part of her interview with VIBE.com, but it was nothing compared to the second part of the interview.  Check out some more excerpts below.

That’s commendable to say. But what about that Twitter message you sent her?

I did not expect that letter to do what it did, I swear. I was in a state of insanity when I wrote that letter. I sat on the bed and I was like, ‘I can't take this shit anymore’ and lost my mind. I sat and wrote it all out on paper first, and then I tweeted it. The next morning it was on every blog and I was like ‘Ah! Oh my God, what the fuck did I do?!’ It was not intended to be that. And I kind of felt bad.

You’ve mentioned in the past that Swizz repeatedly denied having an affair with Alicia. Did he ever fully come out and admit to it?
My husband admitted to having his affair on Mothers Day 2008, six months after I found out. I didn't sleep for a whole year. I had to take pills to sleep because I'd wake up in the middle of the night crying. I couldn't even look at my son some days because I didn't have the strength and I never wanted him to feel my bad energy. It was a battle. They are just now going public, but this has been going on for a very long time. I refused to really break it down for people to understand because there was no way I could go around not making [Swizz and Alicia] look extra crazy and I didn't want to put that out there for my son. I didn't want him to see his father as a monster. But the shit is deep.

You can read the rest of part 2 here.

BTW.. Mashonda mentioned in the interview that she didn't want to put all their business out but that if telling her story would help other women she was all for it.  It's crazy she said that because one of my readers contacted me yesterday after I posted the first part of the interview and told me how much she appreciated me posting the story and the link.  She said it really helped her with something she is currently going through.  Hell, I can't say that I really blame Mashonda for speaking on what happened.  If Swizz and Alicia can live their lives and speak about their relationship and how they found love, Mashonda should be able to speak on what she went through as well.

Source VIBE.com

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