♪♪
This meal used to feed almost like the whole community
of boys. My son used to have all their friends over.
Their mom used to call the house saying "It he at home?"
I say "no, but he should be!"
I'll be back. Don't touch nothing.
I've had people to call me now being grown with
their own children asked me for the recipe.
No, then I'll have to kill you.
♪♪
Yeah, we're going to the kitchen right now.
I think I smell something good.
Heard my mom was coming today, so.
♪♪
Hello? How's it going?
Hey!
How's it going?
I'm great!
I'm good. I'm good.
I thought I'd take a time out
and come and fix you your favorite meal!
Since you've been on the go on the go.
I have. I haven't eaten real food in awhile.
I know! So I thought I'd come and your favorite.
And you know what that is!
I sure do! Because I can see everything. I see it all.
You see the ingredients and everything going on!
Oh boy.
Oh yeah.
I just call it Mama's Beef Pie. We actually have our
ground beef, we have the corn and we have the vegetables.
Once we do all that, then we actually do a tomato base,
but we actually put seasonings in it to make it really, really
good. And this is something that I'm using, read that?
Slap your Mama.
Don't ever try that.
Not gonna do it. This is gonna be terrible.
[laughter]
Because I'm doing, I'm doing a cleanse right now.
I'm not allowed to eat, but I might have to
break that real quick. I don't know.
Proud of you.
Stronger every day.
[laughter]
What does the cleanse consist of?
How do you go about doing it? What is it?
It's just liquid. It's just liquid.
No intake of solid foods or anything like that is literally
all I can have all day is water and coconut water.
No sex, so that's been weird.
What?
Yeah, it's been very terrible.
I couldn't do that fast.
It's um, it's um. Gross.
What?
Right now I'm actually getting ready to chop up the vegetables
to go in the dish because of the fact that when you making it,
the ground beef is really good. But when you put bell peppers
and onions with it, it brings out the flavor! That flavor!
Yes, it bring out that flavor.
Oh, this meal is important to me because I, uh, you know, grew
up the whole family household, everybody always gathered around
for dinner. Nobody, you know, took their food in their rooms
or anything like that. And this is a real nostalgic meal for me.
Like when you, when you think back to how you grew up
and things like that, most of the things you think of is
the food you ate. I mean it's important to me
because it just takes me back to humble beginnings,
which I'm always a fan of. I'm always going to pay attention
to because this is what you need in life,
you know, once you get as big as I am.
Uh, career wise and size wise, you know.
You're not that big.
Not anymore! Not with that cleanse! Come on.
[laughter]
Okay. Now what I'm getting ready to do is I'm actually
getting ready to brown the ground beef, I actually put
the ground beef in. Right now what I'm gonna do is
I'm going to add the seasonings to this, and I have to
watch myself because I'm heavy handed. And that's chili powder.
Oh my God, that smells so good.
This was the worst scheduling of all time.
This is the garlic powder [T-Pain chuckles]
and the oregano!
I just added the onions and bell peppers,
because the ground beef is pretty much ready.
One day I was coming home and on the side of the road,
this guy was selling toys and I stopped by and he had this
little, this little piano and it was like $5.
And he said, "oh, I give it to you if you buy it,
and batteries." I say, "I'm not buying a battery."
So he gave it to me free. I ain't buying no batteries!
I bought the lil keyboard and I took it home, and sure enough,
I gave it to Faheem and he was, he went in that room
and he came back out and being Muslims, we didn't
celebrate Christmas. He came back out and he played
Jingle Bells for his daddy.
Sure did!
So daddy was like, "hold up! Where did that come from?"
"You know we don't do that!" You know, whatever.
"Go get another song."
So he went back in, he came back with Silent Night!
That Silent Night was solid, though!
Oh, it was solid.
It was like a trap version.
Yeah it was! And we got in a recording studio because
he was actually going to a studio and they actually was
using him to sell beats to people that was actually in
the music industry. Yeah. So he came home crying one day
and he was upset. So we, being the parents we were,
we were like, "don't worry about them, we'll get you
your own stuff! You don't got to go back down there!"
And there it was!
It was a thug cry. It was a thug cry. It wasn't like a hard
cry. It was just a few tears. Know what I'm saying?
Buckled up a little bit, it was a thug cry.
Wasn't hard. You know?
Mmm hmm.
Yeah, just move on to that.
Mmm hmm. It was a hard cry, it took my soul!
I'm a thug, it was because I wanted to fight.
That's what it was!
Oh my God. I'm dying.
I loved it. It didn't matter to me. We built our house,
made the soundproof.
What's this now?
Now we're going to actually drain the beef,
because now you can't have all of the fat in the meal, right?
So you got to drain it!
Oh jesus, look at all that.
Drain it! See?
I'm gonna have to read all of the guidelines of this diet
one more time. Seems like all the stuff I want.
Because once I drain the actual liquid and fat
off of the beef. See how it's dripping?
Are you sure this is a part of this?
I've been doing this since you was born.
Oh my goodness.
We're going to go ahead and add the corn to this.
And the corn actually brings out the sweetness
of the ground beef. So...
It sure does.
What we're going to do is we're going to actually add in
the tomato sauce. And now the only thing that we're going to
actually add as far as seasoning to this would be the Slap Your
Mama so it could have the spice to it, but it should actually
have a blend already from the ground beef.
So we're gonna actually make the cornbread
and I'm gonna let, since he used to do it
when he was small, I'mma have him go down memory lane.
So I guess the first thing we're going to do is we're going to
actually open up the packages.
Okay! That's important.
Important.
Boom. Like nothing.
Like here. There.
I would eat this right now. Just exactly like it is.
Put a stick of butter in there.
Whole thing?
The whole thing.
That's cholesterol right here.
There you go. Dump it.
I hate the feeling of butter.
You're gonna dump it. There you go.
And then we're going to do a half a cup of sugar.
I was going to lick it, is the problem.
[laughter] Don't lick it.
Just dump the whole?
Just dump the whole thing. Okay!
Oh, look at that. Then we're going to actually put the milk
in. And you're going to mix it.
There you go. There you go!
Ahh!
Don't be scared.
Alright.
Complete actual torture.
Oh boy. There we go!
I've seen this on TV before!
I think my style came from a few different places.
I mean it's ultimately came from Tallahassee
and just different experiences and things like that.
But mostly it came from my dad.
That, that helped out a lot, but you know, it,
it was always music around me and all my friends wanted
to be rappers. Obviously everybody wanted to be rappers.
And I think that's what drew me to singing how I do now,
because everybody in Tallahassee was doing the same thing.
It was always, everybody wanted to be rappers,
everybody want to rap about the same stuff.
So I figured I'll switch it up. Being a singer
was also considered being soft, so it was like,
if you wasn't a gangster rapper and you wasn't rapping
about smoking and drinking and killing, then you weren't
an artist. And so I took that big risk to be different
and I just wanted to do something different
from everybody else. And I mean my sound just came from
all of that. Just all that influence.
There was a lot.
Alright! He did a great job! It looks like cornbread.
He did better than me. Pour this on top.
Mm, mm mm mm.
That looks good, don't it?
Yes. That looks amazing.
This is it. This is the famous beef pie.
So now what we do is we actually stick it in the oven
and we let it bake until the cornbread
is completely brown and done.
Okay. Well this is the finished product
and it comes out like this.
Perfect.
Voila!
I used to pretty much ask for this every night.
This was my favorite dish and I would always tell people
when they come to my house and they want food,
I would say, look, I got, I got four favorite dishes
and I hope you like Tilapia because that's three of 'em.
Watch this shit because this is the part that, oh. Mmm.
And this is the part that makes it worth it.
That cornbread starts sopping up that juice.
Oh it's, I mean, it's it's...
Well. I'm proud of you for what you're doing really.
As far as you know, trying to build your energy up
and keep your head straight and stuff of this nature.
I would definitely come back and fix that
for you after your seven days. So let me know.
Everything came out pretty good. Tastes okay, and I'll taste it.
I'll take your word for it. Hoo!
So on my way over, well before I thought about coming over
and fixing your memorable meal, I've thought about some pictures
I have, and I thought I'll pull some out. I say,
"You're going to get a kick out of these."
Oh my goodness, I haven't seen any of these in so long.
For sure. Three days old.
Good lord. Good lord.
That was special.
That is something else.
Remember that one?
[T-Pain laughs uproariously] I wanted to do this so bad.
Remember that? We never could figure out how you did that.
Oh my goodness. That is so funny.
You robbing you.
That is too funny.
First wrapped bus!
Oh man, I'm scanning all these. Oh, that's so crazy.
Oh my God. I didn't know, I don't have pictures
of any of this stuff. Oh!
Oh!
Look at the baby!
I was dark!
Two days later, it was like they switched babies on me!
I had bells on the shoes.
You know, just a couple of pictures I've thought
I bring by and you know, you did good. You did good.
I tried.
You've been doing good. To think that you came from here,
to [sings]. But you did good and your family's proud of,
you know, we do. We love you to death.
I appreciate it.
I pray for you every night, keep you safe. Make sure you're
happy, that's all that's important to me is that you be
happy in whatever you're doing,
It's working. It is working. I appreciate it.
I see the progress. Hey, like Nick Cannon told Kanye West
today, "I'm glad you're not in that sunken place, brother."
[laughter]