A quarter century ago, we first got the keys to celebrity homes across the country with MTV Cribs. The docuseries, which launched in September 2020, followed celebs — at least, those who allowed MTV’s camera crews into their inner sanctums — as they gave tours of their houses.
“We started with a very informal in-house talk about, ‘Hey, let’s try to do this,’ and at the time everyone thought it would be impossible because no one was going to let people peek into their lives that way,” creator Nina L. Diaz told Thrillist in 2015.
Indeed, the Cribs team did have trouble persuading celebs to open their doors, but they eventually found willing participants, producer Erika Clarke explained. “Rappers and athletes were way more into doing it because of the culture of, ‘Look at what we have,’” Clarke said.
Now, 25 years on, certain Cribs episodes have become immortal, and many are still yours for the viewing on YouTube. Here are our picks for the wildest Cribs tours.
8. Leslie Jordan
In the late sitcom star’s Cribs appearance, he revealed he inherited his apartment from Tupac Shakur, was “scared to death” of the tree on his balcony, and had his underpants monogrammed. But the best part came when he riffed on a Cribs trope: “Here is the bedroom, the boudoir, where the magic happens,” he says, before cracking up. “Guess what? There’s no magic! Nothing happens in here!”
7. JoJo
Good thing this pop star’s uncle didn’t sing “get out (leave) right now”! She claimed his Cape Cod house was her own for her Cribs tour. “My mom and I were living out of suitcases, and we were mostly in hotels,” she admitted to HuffPost in 2015. “I should’ve balled hard and been like, ‘Welcome to my crib, look at how luxurious it is,’ and I should have rented out a place. But no. I just used my uncle’s crib. So that was me lying on Cribs.”
6. Lil Wayne & Birdman
MTV Cribs revealed how these two Cash Money rappers shared a New Orleans pad with an octagonal living area, the centerpiece of which was an indoor hot tub. (“We didn’t want no furniture,” Birdman explained. “We were just gonna do something different.”) And as if that weren’t unique enough, the pair also had a purple stretch Chrysler PT Cruiser parked outside.
5. Shaquille O’Neal
Call it Orlando Magic: This NBA star’s Florida home had a round, Superman-themed bed measuring 15 feet long and 30 feet wide. “I wanted it to be the biggest bed in the world, and this is the bed that they made me,” he said during his Cribs tour. Well, he did have a mega-mansion to fill one way or another…
4. 50 Cent
With 51,657 square feet, 19 bedrooms, 35 bathrooms, and 17.6 acres, is this Connecticut mansion “Just a Lil Bit” excessive? At least 50 had fellow G-Unit rappers to share the space with. However, the luxury wasn’t all it was cracked up to be on Cribs: The rapper was selling the house at the time the episode aired, and he finally found a buyer 12 years later, after an 84 percent price cut, as People reported.
3. Robbie Williams
The castle this British pop star flaunted in his Cribs episode was actually a property he’d rented from Jane Seymour, and he also rented butlers for the taping, as he confessed in a 2020 radio interview (per The Sun). “We didn’t let her know that I was going to pretend it was my house,” he added. “And because I was like 23 and full of spunk, I didn’t even consider other people’s thoughts or feelings, so I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to Jane Seymour.”
2. Mariah Carey
All these years later, Carey’s MTV Cribs episode still has fans “Obsessed.” As she gave a tour of her enormous New York City apartment (between multiple costume changes, we should add), the pop diva showed off an in-house salon, a lingerie closet, a mermaid-themed screening room, and in one moment of iconic reality TV, she started using the stair-climber machine in her home gym while wearing four-inch heels.
1. Redman
The most infamous Cribs tour was that of Redman’s Staten Island “De La Casa” in all its disheveled glory: clothes in storage bins, a cousin sleeping on the floor, cash in a shoebox, two exposed wires instead of a doorbell. Redman told Thrillist he at least wanted to clean up the place, but the MTV crew turned up early. “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. You just get back into bed, and we’ll make it like we just disturbed you,’ and we played it right on out from there,” he said. “Not too much setup, not too much dialogue to go over. We just winged it.”
