“That man beat my ass.” Most of us remember the episode of “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta,” quite well. The tears K. Michelle shed when she told Rasheeda about the abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-boyfriend were unforgettable. The tears were in response to Rasheeda, who with the straightest of faces, told K. Michelle that the story she had just shared with her probably didn’t happen.
At the time, we didn’t know who “that man” was. But people starting putting the puzzle pieces together and were able to surmise that she was talking about record-producer Memphitz. And it wasn’t long before he came forward, denying K. Michelle’s claims, attempting to tear down her credibility in the process.
The “Love and Hip Hop Atlanta” scene with Rasheeda was hard to watch. One, because K. Michelle was reliving a real hurt. But mostly because Rasheeda, her castmate, another woman, should have been able to listen supportively. Even if in knowing Memphitz, she had reason to doubt her accusations, telling K. Michelle that she was lying was just not the right move.
Sadly, Rasheeda wasn’t the first or the last woman to tell K. Michelle they believed she was lying about the whole ordeal.
After her, there was Toya Wright, Memphitz’s current [estranged] wife. She quickly grew tired of hearing K. Michelle talk about her family and had some less than pleasant things to say about the singer turned reality star. After K. Michelle appeared on Wendy Williams talking about the abuse from Memphitz, Toya commented on Instagram saying “fuck K.” Then in an interview with The Jasmine Brand, Toya blasted K. Michelle for not having any proof of her allegations against Memphitz.
“If somebody abuse you like that, where is the proof, where is the police report, where is the pictures, where is the messages that you said he sent threats to your kid and threatened to kill your child?…It don’t matter about love, you would be in jail if you threaten my kid…And she’s saying that I said all this stuff about her, pull it up, where is it?”
Then she took it a step further:
“Anybody that knows him for real just be like ‘what is wrong with this girl?’ And the crazy part about it is everybody say that you crazy and you hit them. You the abuser.”
Then Tamar, Toya and Memphitz’s friend, jumped into the mix. Subtweeting K. Michelle, but @ mentioning Toya, telling her to ignore the haters and enjoy her marriage. She’s also called K. Michelle a liar flat out, instructing her via Twitter, that it was time to tell the truth.
But this weekend, when Memphitz’s defamation suit was thrown out, it seemed that K. Michelle finally received public vindication.
After a years-long battle, during his deposition, while he was under oath, Memphitz finally admitted that not only did he smother K. Michelle with a pillow but also that he threatened to kill her son. Sounds pretty abusive to me.
And now that the truth has come from Memphitz’s own lips, I wonder how all the women who rode for him are feeling these days. Perhaps, quite salty.
I doubt that this will ever happen, but it really wouldn’t be a bad idea for Rasheeda, Toya, and Tamar to issue an apology to K. Michelle. Each of these women went out of their way to drag K’s name through the mud when she was telling the truth the whole time.
It’s incredibly mind boggling that Memphitz would attack K. Michelle for years in interviews, over social media and through others, only to eventually acknowledge that he did what she said he did. What was it all for? Surely, he didn’t go through all of this just to get attention. Either way, I’m sure homeboy is looking a bit unrecognizable to quite a few people right now. And perhaps this is the man K. Michelle knew all along.
I can understand that each of these ladies had other reasons to dislike K. Michelle. Hell, she’s not exactly my favorite either, but an apology is in order.
The notion that these ladies should apologize is not one I came up with on my own. The Shade Room reports that a mutual friend of Toya, Tamar and Tiny, Sabrina, who owns a business women-empowerment business called The Glam University, wrote an Instagram comment, saying the women treated K. Michelle horribly throughout this whole ordeal.
I agree with Sabrina not only because they called her everything but a child of God; but also because in claiming that she was lying and denying her right to tell her story, they also showed other women, who may share a similar experience, how their stories will be received if they decide to share. That unknown woman, perhaps with a smaller platform than K. Michelle’s, will be told she’s a liar, people will try to silence her and her character will be attacked.
Outside of the far off land called celebrity, we regular folk can all learn something from this. Just because you dislike a woman, even if you have good reason to, doesn’t mean she should not be allowed to speak her truth, without ridicule and degradation. As fellow women, sisters in the struggle against misogyny, we shouldn’t be so quick to dismiss stories of abuse, especially when it could be, and in the case of Tamar, has been one of us.
