T.I. & Tiny Friends & Family Hustle returned to VH1 with an explosive premiere on Oct. 22, all centered around T.I. and Tiny’s marriage. The episode was filmed over the summer, right after a shocking video surfaced online that showed Tip slapping another woman (later identified as Asia’h Epperson’s) butt. “Tip and I’s relationship is very complicated,” Tiny admitted in the episode. “As of right now, the divorce is off. We’re in a better place, but there’s still setbacks in getting back to where we used to be. We’re still living separate.”
This incident with the butt slapping was one of those “setbacks” she referred to, and the episode kicked off with T.I. urging her not to “dwell” on the situation. Naturally, it wasn’t that easy for Tiny. “You should not be grabbing on nobody’s ass,” she said. “I care about the cheating and the disrespect.” T.I. tried to defend himself and argue that the video itself wasn’t the issue. Rather, it was the video being spread around social media that blew things out of proportion.
“Now, all of a sudden, everybody’s opinion makes it into the house,” he told his wife. “I hate it. I don’t care about how they feel. I care about you feel. I love you. The chemistry of you and I cannot be duplicated. You can put you with somebody else, me with somebody else — and you ain’t going to get the same thing.”
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At the end of their conversation, Tiny still sent T.I. away to the home he’s living in separately, but regardless of how annoyed she was, even she had to admit that it didn’t spell the end of things in the relationship. “Our relationship has too much history just to throw away,” she explained. “Tip just needs to step up. If it’s me he wants, then he needs to know me that he’s fighting for what he loves.” T.I. attempted to do just that by buying Tiny a “very nice car” for her birthday, but even after that, she admitted that it didn’t change where the relationship stood.
As for T.I., in the end, he did admit to his mistake — although he also made a point to reveal how pissed he was at whoever recorded him and put the video online. “Ultimately, I was wrong, of course,” he concluded. “I will accept accountability in the part that I played. The inevitability of falling in love with somebody is, one day, you’re going to hurt each other.”
By the end of the episode, Tiny seemed to have come around to fully forgiving her man, too, with the help of her girlfriends. “Our eight year anniversary is coming up and this time around, it’s a new beginning,” she said. “I’m so thankful I have my girls around for the insight. Havnig someone that understands all that you’re going through — being a celebrity, and a mom, working, a wife — all those juggles and the hats you have to wear, it’s a breath of fresh air to have someone to talk to that can relate.”