Over the last 25 years, Redman has amassed a Rap and film career that towers over most others. However, one of the keys to success for the Def Squad product has been staying modest and being humble. Even starring in major films, headlining global tours, and hitting the charts many times over, Reggie Noble is still an approachable Rap star, with or without tissue stuck in his nose. In a conversation with Ebro In The Morning, Redman opens up about his home life, and why materialism has never been his move.

Red’ discusses his geographic closeness to Wu-Tang Clan’s place of origin in Staten Island, New York. “I live right around the corner from Park Hill. If you know where Park Hill projects is, I’m like right around the corner—but it’s a cool area though.” Redman admits that living in wealthier neighbors led him to not only feeling alienated, but being police profiled. Co-host Laura Stylez asks Reggie whatever happened to his home as seen on a famed 2001 episode of MTV Cribs. “Yeah, that’s what the hell I live in! The same one. Yeah, was you makin’ something about it?” he playfully jabs. “That’s my crib!”

Ebro asks the Gilla House MC if he has a maid in his Shaolin crib. “A housekeeper? I can’t even fit like four or five people in there without it being crowded. It’s real small, two bedrooms—two bathrooms though. It’s only one way in and one way out. No backdoor. That’s it,” he details. “That’s how I like it.” He says modesty is a key component to his life. “Like, I wouldn’t know what to do with a big house. Like, I [offered] to get my moms a big house, and my kids stay in [that] house and stuff, but me? I don’t know. I’m like that [The Odd Couple character] ‘Oscar Madison’ kinda rapper. I like staying in a comfortable [place], just waking up—right to the [mixing] board, right to the bathroom, right to the kitchen and cook, and right back to the board—working. Working!”

In 2015, Redman admitted that none of that famed footage MTV captured was staged. “They show up f*cking early,” Redman recalled, in a Thrillist oral history told to Chris Faraone. “I wanted to at least clean up a bit, since I ain’t have any real furniture in there and sh*t, and I thought I had a little bit of time, and I didn’t. When they knocked on the door I was still sleepy-eyed, and they were like, ‘You know what, this is good, let’s just roll with it.” He added, “We just winged it…Everything you see was real. It’s just everyday life for us.” Revealing the property began as a real estate investment for the Newark, New Jersey native, he later called it home. “Once you do things and keep things 100% with yourself, you can never lose,” he professed. That same year, he later told Vlad TV that MTV wanted a grander casa for the Def Jam MC and actor. “They wanted me to rent a house so I could open the big double doors and say, ‘Look at my sh*t’…And, my mother would have told me, ‘you know goddamn well that wasn’t your house.”

Living nearby to Park Hill is symbolic. On the just-released The Saga Continues album by Wu-Tang Clan, Red’ appears on the first two singles, alongside MCs like Method Man and Inspectah Deck. He also rocked for Masta Killa’s recently-released Loyalty Is Royalty, on video single “Therapy.”

Redman is presently working on Muddy Waters 2, after paying for the samples. The sequel to the 1996 gold LP is slated to release through InGrooves. 9th Wonder publicly submitted seven beats for Reggie’s upcoming project.

#BonusBeat: Recently Red’s Gilla House artist Saukrates released a new mix to his “Hate Runs Deep” single. Ambrosia For Heads made a “Now You See Me” version:

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