T.I.'s Daughter Deyjah Tears Up Addressing His Comments About Going to Her Gynecologist Appointments

"Things are completely uncomfortable for me right now," Deyjah Harris said

Published on June 16, 2020 11:44 PM

T.I.'s daughter is opening about how it felt to hear her father discuss making "yearly trips to the gynecologist" in order to check on the status of his daughter's virginity.

During Monday's episode of T.I. & Tiny: Friends and Family Hustle, Deyjah Harris talked about the immediate fall-out of the rapper's remarks while she was on vacation.

"Things are completely uncomfortable for me right now," the 18-year-old said in a confessional. "We're all together in this house, so I have to see my Dad and be around him. And we're in a foreign country so it's not like I can leave and get away."

"I'm scrolling on Twitter, and I see that I've been tagged in a post," she added. "The only word that I saw was 'gynecologist' and I didn't even need to read the whole title 'cause I just knew. My heart sank — very shocked, hurt, angry, embarrassed."

"I mean, honestly, I'm embarrassed definitely for sure," she told her cousins. "I'm trying to put it in the back of my mind so I'm not really thinking about it. I know it's not healthy. But I've been doing that since I was a child."

Adding that T.I. had been going with her to the gynecologist "since I was 14 or 15," she said that "couldn't have said no" to his coming with her.

T.I.'s mom Latrice, Deyjah's grandmother, confronted the rapper over his comments he made on Ladies Like Us podcast, on an episode that has since been deleted, and he told her that he did go with her to those appointments.

While Latrice tried to convince her son to talk with Deyjah, he refused, saying, "If Deyjah hasn't come to me, why would I disrupt my energy with that?"

"I told a joke that was laced in truth, also [with] a lot of major embellishments," T.I. said in a confessional. "I was speaking past tense. People thought I was speaking present day."

"I need more time to figure out what I want to say, but things are completely awkward and uncomfortable between me and my Dad," Deyjah said to her cousins, getting emotional. "Prior to all of this happening, our relationship was pretty decent, but after all of this, it's changed, honestly."

T.I. previously addressed the major backlash and criticism he received for his insensitive comments about Deyjah's virginity, telling Jada Pinkett Smith on an episode of Red Table Talk in November 2019, "I came to clear up any misconceptions that have been surrounding how we interact and parent and what is appropriate and inappropriate."

"From a place of truth, I began to embellish and exaggerate and I think a lot of people took it extremely literal," he added, explaining that while at the time he didn't understand the sensitivities surrounding what he was speaking about, he "absolutely" does now.

T.I. went on to clarify that the visits to the gynecologist were made when his daughter was younger, and that neither his daughter nor her mother, singer Ms. Niko, had "any" objection about him being there at the time.

Jada Pinkett Smith & T.I. — Gregg DeGuire/FilmMagic; Paras Griffin/Getty

"She did have a problem with me talking about it however, and I understand that, and I am incredibly apologetic to her for that," he said. "She understands my intentions and she knows who I am, who I've always been."

As for why he waited several weeks to publicly address the situation, the rapper said that initially, his daughter had asked him to stay silent.

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"My daughter said just let it go, don't say nothing, just let it go and I did — until l I had different directives," he said. "I would not be here today had I not had those different directives. I'd still be sitting in silence."

As the episode continued, T.I. spoke about how his comments didn't come from a place of trying to control his daughter.

"I am here to protect all of the children from themselves until they make it to a point where they have awareness, a sense of self and discernment to be able to make certain decisions on their own that will impact their lives indefinitely," he said. "I'm not there to protect necessarily virginity, I just know that is a big move."

"That's different — that's education," Pinkett Smith noted.

Ahead of the episode's release, Pinkett Smith told PEOPLE that she was "proud" of the episode.

"It was an exceptional show and I'm proud of it," she said.