I’m sure by now, if you’re someone who dwells long enough on the Internet to stay informed about trending news, you’ve probably run across a video of King Harris, the son of rapper T.I. and Tameka “Tiny” Harris, completely blowing his top inside a private suite at an NFL game on Sunday. He was present with his parents and their crew in the suite after his father performed for the Atlanta Falcons’ 50th anniversary of hip-hop celebration, and while inside, he started to go live on Instagram. During that live, a cringe-worthy conversation was shared where a young King attempted to debunk the idea that he’d grown up in a lavish way in Atlanta, as presented on the family’s old VH1 series, The Family Hustle. Instead, he wanted everyone to know he’d spent more time at his grandmother’s house in the ‘hood.
Unfortunately for him, his parents made it clear that he knew nothing of such an upbringing and had grown up with a silver spoon in his mouth in a gated community. The back and forth banter was light at first.
“King, have you ever woke up with a roach on your face?” T.I. asked.
“That’s not the goal,” King replied.
“Alright then, man gone somewhere!”
“Y’all want to go to the bando in ma ma neighborhood? Do y’all want to go to the bando?” King asked, referring to the trap house, or a drug house. “To make him look better, he say sh-t he know not true. Silver spoon? I ain’t never ate with that a day in my life,” the 19-year-old added. “I used to have to run to my grandma house because I’m getting into fights.”
“I’ll tell y’all the reason he want to be over there,” said Tiny, who took over his live momentarily to spill some tea on her son. “Because he can suck a pacifier over there until he was 12 years old. He didn’t do that at the house.”
From there, things went downhill as his parents and their circle laughed. King started throwing around the n-word and showcasing aggression toward his father as he emphatically stated, “I stand on business! You ain’t had me put up nowhere.” He started calling his father a liar (“You cappin’!”) and it seems some private feelings started to spill out for all to see in the suite as he began to shout. Eventually, T.I., while telling him, “You’re embarrassing yourself!” moved in on him and physically gathered him in front of everyone.
It was a mess.
I’ll say this: Yes, King behaved ridiculously and was wildly disrespectful to his parents. Almost as wild? Watching him seek to perpetuate a lifestyle of having it hard if he really didn’t. What is the reward for allegedly struggling and being in dangerous spaces surrounded by lack? Those who’ve truly endured don’t need to work so hard to get people to believe that was their experience. And is it really something to brag about?
But two things can be true. King can be spoiled, delusional and ill-mannered, but his parents can also have made a misstep by attempting to publicly embarrass their son. Now I know he chose to go live during the festivities, and they don’t need to lie to help him convince the Internet that he’s some street dude that he’s not, but a pacifier at 12? Even I would be looking at my mom and dad crazy if they brought that out of their holster.
I do believe what Tiny and T.I. had to say about King was just pure jokes, and he did take them way too close to the heart. However, T.I. has publicly joked about his son and even laughed at him in the past, doing so with other people on the radio. That was what crossed my mind after this whole scuffle was caught on video.
“Tip could we talk about your son? He went viral the other day for his teeth.” That was the question asked on a radio show he visited during the summer. While T.I. went on to laud King for putting his own money together to get work done on his teeth, he then laughed as the radio co-hosts, grown people, joked about his son’s chompers, which he agreed were bright white. In fact, he laughed harder than everybody else in the room, eventually saying, “He’s a growing boy. He’s gon’ grow into it!”
A laugh with random people at your child’s expense. Interesting, right? You can crack jokes about your kid all you want, but you shouldn’t be comfortable letting other people, especially those who aren’t family, do the same.
With that in mind, perhaps it’s not a coincidence that after the embarrassing altercation at the Atlanta Falcons game, King would share cryptic messages on his InstaStories that included, “If ima mistake say dat stop making da world think u fw me when u DONT.” (For the record, “fw” means “f–k with.”) Maybe King had enough of his dad’s jokes and laughs.
Again, I’m not making excuses for poor behavior. However, he’s 19. Not only is maturity lacking at this time in a youth’s life, but it’s also a time when he’s trying to figure out his own identity, which can be difficult as the child of public figures and one navigating both a big family and the social media age. He’s the outspoken child. And one thing that’s also clear to me is King is the sensitive child, too.
If you’ve ever encountered the sensitive kid among the brood, then you know it doesn’t take much to set them off. I have one, so I know. And while you can’t tiptoe around their rollercoaster feelings, and you shouldn’t try because it’s exhausting, you also can’t make an effort to mess with their triggers. In a room full of movers and shakers, as someone who is presently trying to have their own career in rap, he may have wanted to present himself in a certain way that he felt confident about, even if there was some fallacy to his origin story. Was that the proper time to pull the covers off the charade? Was that the moment to let everyone know he had a pacifier for a lot longer than he should have? Probably not, especially not among mixed company at least. And even the attempts to calm him down were just Tiny telling him to “Shut up!” There was no effort to take him out of the room to talk with him or to get him to vent privately. An escalating situation was just allowed to escalate into a physical altercation in public (and on the Internet, in turn) as King asked why his mother would allow his father to pull his card like that.
We live in a culture where embarrassing your kids for laughs is a thing. In fact, it’s a whole category of videos on social media. And while it comes off as harmless, experts say it’s not. If you’ve ever been put on blast by your mom or dad at a family gathering, at a school event or around their friends—Who hasn’t been left red faced by a request to do “that little dance” for everyone only to be joked about for choosing not to? The memories—then you know it’s not a great feeling. Now imagine how those feelings stir inside of someone who is sensitive. Imagine how they might also stir inside someone who has been in the public eye since he was a small child and had people talk about him, his teeth, his music and his looks at 19. I know young men around his age coping with depression as they try to figure out their next steps as young adults. He may display a certain posture to the outside world, but it can’t be easy for him.
Now, I would never in my frustration during my adolescent years stoop to shouting and cursing at my parents in front of people because I wasn’t raised to do that. But T.I. and Tiny should know the sensitive man they raised and in turn, know when to stop. When it’s not funny to the target, it’s just not funny. And trust me, I get it. The sensitive child of the bunch doesn’t need to be babied. They do need some tough love at times to help them be more resilient because the world will eventually show them the consequences of being too thin skinned. However, there is a time and a place to do that teaching, and in this case, it was neither the time nor the place.