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If someone gave you a house, refurnished and absolutely free, would you care if the only catch was that someone you didn’t like helped to design it?
If you’re Nancy “Mama” Jones, the answer is hell yeah.
The mother of rapper Jim Jones lost her home in a fire, on Christmas Day at that in 2017. When the devastating event happened, Jim promised that he would “buy my family [the] biggest house I can afford and fill it wit more love,” and that’s what he did. As was shown on Love and Hip Hop New York last night, we were able to see the excitement on Mama Jones’s face, as well as Jim’s sister, when he brought her into her new home. It was an emotional moment — until Jim shared that his longtime fiancée, Chrissy Lampkin, was the one who helped design the place. Mama Jones went from loving it to hating on it. If you’ll recall, these two have been at odds since the beginning of Love and Hip Hop New York, and as Mama Jones recently shared, they’re not on good terms or bad terms, but rather, “no terms.”
If you’re wondering why Lampkin was leading the work being done on this home, according to her, she has a background in interior design, and we know she sells real estate, so Jim felt she could be of great help. Mama Jones disagreed. Those happy tears dried up, and all of a sudden she had grievances she wanted to share about her own input being left out in the design.
“I was totally upset that Chrissy decorated this house. Our pasts really wasn’t all that great,” she said. “So for me to sit here and you have someone decorate my house that we’re not feeling each other like that, that’s a no no.”
“You don’t even understand. For two years he’s been building this house and getting me all excited and he didn’t say nothing to me about no Chrissy designing the house,” she added. “He know better than that. Even though you bought the house for me, that doesn’t give you the right, and it definitely doesn’t give you the right to have Chrissy go in and decorate my house.”
She made some valid points. For instance, Mama Jones wanted a red door on the outside of the home, and Jim noted that Chrissy didn’t feel it would look right. He agreed, as well as his sister, but then again, the house is for their mother right? Some preferences, whether tacky or not, could have been considered since she was going to be the one living in that space. An upset Jimmy said she didn’t need to have a say on her own home because he bought it for her so his decisions counted most. That also wasn’t fair. Not to mention, in two years of building the home, no one could have told her Chrissy was going to be working on it? As I always say, if you have to keep it a secret, then you already know you aren’t handling things in the right way.
And, may I add, there’s something to be said about energies. If you and I don’t get along well and that’s been known for years, I don’t want you dictating things in my house and also allowing your energy to be all up and through it. Just saying.
All that being said though, Jim meant well, and that should have been the main focus. She could have always gone ahead and made whatever changes to the home she felt were necessary, especially since she didn’t have to pay for any of it, and some sage probably would have gone far enough. No need to act completely ungrateful about the whole thing. Sometimes we have to give people grace when they’re doing a favor for us, one we didn’t ask for, even if they don’t always go about it in the way we would like. Her son’s heart, and that of his fiancée’s, were in the right place.
For the record though, Mama Jones thinks she handled things just fine.
“How am I the f–k being petty that’s my house and I should be entitled to actually do what I wanna do with my house that’s a sanctuary for any woman,” she wrote on social media after the episode. “No woman wants another woman to decorate her house every woman’s taste is different.”
However, many people on Twitter believed that Mama Jones overreacted, while some said she had the right to be upset. Hit the flip to see all the reactions:
