Real Housewives of Atlanta star, Kandi Burruss, got dragged on Twitter a few days ago after she solicited donations from CashApp for her daughter’s birthday. As one of the show’s most popular stars, Burruss first rose to fame in the 90s as a member of the R&B girl group, Xscape. It was during this time she co-wrote the song “No Scrubs,” which was initially written for Xscape, but ultimately recorded by TLC. It went on to become one of the biggest hits of that decade and one of the career-defining hits for TLC.
Kandi has long been a fan favorite on Real Housewives of Atlanta. She’s often seen as the down to earth, ‘around the way girl’ with a heart of gold but ‘tell it like it is’ attitude. These traits have endeared her to her fans. However, she tested that audience’s love after her daughter, Riley solicited birthday money from fans via CashApp. Shortly after that, proud Mama Kandi joined in the birthday crowdfunding, also encouraging fans to send money to her “baby on her birthday.”
So look, here’s the thing. In the public landscape of Gofundme – this and Kickstarter – that, countless people have turned to the public soliciting funds for a range of causes. Some of those causes are unquestionably worthy – like helping pay for an indigent family’s pediatric cancer treatments. Then there are the vapid ploys, like 2 queens trying to get the public to pay for their second wedding celebration in Europe because, as they claim, one of the groom’s parents couldn’t make it to the US for their first big wedding bash in New York.
The reason fans flipped on Kandi and Riley is plain and straightforward; Kandi has money and lots of it. Living your life publicly as Khandi has, means we all know she spent $65,000 on her daughter’s first car, which just so happened to be a brand new Porsche. We also know that Kandi and her daughter live in a mansion in the most exclusive neighborhood in Atlanta, Georgia. We know that Kandi’s fortune, based on the multiple Grammy-winning and nominated hit songs she’s co-written, in conjunction with her many entrepreneurial business ventures, reportedly equates to 35 million dollars. So why then are she and her daughter asking the public for money?
People on Twitter asked this same question. They were not having it. They (especially Black Twitter) called Kandi out asking her what in the h*ll was going on. Fans speculate either this was just a blatant sense of entitlement propagated by pseudo fame, a blatant attempt to take advantage of fans within a celebrity-obsessed society, or Kandi and Riley just being greedy. None of these three possibilities is a good look. It seems the mom and daughter duo realized as much after the backlash. Suddenly, after a day or so of soliciting the coins, all the birthday begging stopped. The posts were deleted from both mother and daughter’s social media accounts.
Next, in what may be the quickest attempt at a PR spin in history, Kandi and Riley instantly stopped the Twitter dragging by creating a prize giveaway. The giveaway consisted of Riley relinquishing the monies received from fans and gifting them to a lucky random winner through Cashapp. The amount reportedly was $500.
There is one more possibility I thought of to explain this whole debacle, and that is maybe this is an example of reality versus “reality.” In a culture that celebrates surface glitter without examining if there’s more depth on the inside, perhaps Kandi Burruss is actually broke. Truth be told, anything can be rented, leased, or loaned. So possibly all the Instagram pics of gigantic red-bowed birthday gift Bentleys and pretty Porsches are just bullsh*t.
Whatever the case, it’s safe to assume at this point that whatever gifts Riley’s birthday brings, it won’t be at the expense of the millions of RHOA fans – many of whom who are struggling to pay bills of their own just to survive.
