*Peter Gunz -born Peter Pankey – and fellow rapper Lord Tariq created the ultimate shout-out to the Bronx back in the ’90s with Deja Vu (“Uptown Baby”). He is now one of America’s most-watched reality stars compelling viewers with his former tumultuous love triangle during “Love and Hip Hop” where he was involved with the gorgeous Tara Wallace, cheated on her, and ultimately married – and then divorced – beautiful German singer Amina Buddadfly.
The hip-hop pioneer laughs at the irony of being known as a cheater and becoming the first Black host of the show “Cheaters.”
“I might do another season or two. I’m sympathetic to those who get caught and those who are heartbroken over the discovery,” he said. “My goal is not to break up a happy home, but instead to help the couples decide if they can work things out or maybe separation is best.”
He also appeared on “Marriage Boot Camp “with Amina and later “After Happily Ever After ” with Tara, a show where your ex finds your next. What is less known is his powerful and often hidden story of growing up in the crack era and overcoming tremendous odds to become the man and father he is today. Peter sits down with iHeart radio and EURweb Spotlight host Jazmyn ‘Jaz’ Summers and gets real on his life journey and what’s next.
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Crack did a job on his family
“Some people I grew up with and a lot of my friends … when they rap about street life, it’s more on the glorification of how they were getting it,” he tells Jaz. “I lived the other side of that. I had three older brothers that was abusing that substance. Crack also had my cousin who basically raised me. Another cousin that I loved was on it. It ravished my family. It was a very, very hard time. I didn’t live that side of selling it and getting the money and buying the cars and this and that. I lived the other side of it. Watching what my family went through, especially my mother, and watching her get heartbroken. It was a bad, rough time. ”
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“I’m the baby boy. I have one brother, in particular, he would steal everything. Coming out of the South Bronx, the way I was raised, we made the best of it. But when you look back on it, it was a terrible time. As a kid, when you’re watching your older brothers go through this, it did a number on me. Watching my mother be upset about it. It was embarrassing for me in the neighborhood. And my brothers were my heroes, my dogs. So to watch superman turn into crackhead, it breaks your heart.”
Peter shares that he tried selling once but it wasn’t a good feeling and it highlights the lack of choices for young Black men in the hood.
“Even though I had a lot of drug dealer friends, I had a little bit of hate for them but I realized at a young age that they were just victims too. Once somebody might have gave me a pack ’cause I was broke and was like if you move this pack you can keep the money. I might have done something like that once in my life, but felt guilty about even doing that. It was hard for me to even write any lyrics glorifying that life.”
But he wasn’t a choir boy, either he tells EURweb Spotlight.
“I never ever did the drug thing. I ended up doing something worse or just as bad as I was messing with selling guns. But yeah, I never smoked weed. I didn’t try alcohol until I was 25 years old. I think I was in 6th grade and my mother grabbed me and she shook me on my way to school and said, you know why your brother’s like that? Because he started smoking weed. She scared me away from it. That’s the credit I give my older brothers when people be like, yo, you’re not mad at him for stealing all your stuff and doing all the things he’s done? The flip side of that is I didn’t need nobody to tell me what crack and drugs do. It was right there in the house. So I never wanted that to happen to me or be like him. I hate to use my brother’s demise for my benefit, but if nothing else, he was the sole reason I never tried anything.”
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Peter is also an atheist.
“I usually don’t talk about it cuz it turns people off.” Peter spills. “People love they God and they don’t want to hear that. I lean more towards atheism. My mother’s side of the family didn’t believe, but it wasn’t an anti either. We celebrated Christmas and put the lights up. Easter, if my aunt or somebody in the building was going to church and said we want to take Peter, my mother always said that’s up to him if he wants to go.”
“But my mom’s side was like that’s all that buullsh*t that was a myth given to us like a “space daddy.” There’s something but it ain’t what they telling us. Now, some people in my family and my siblings, regardless of growing up in a house that wasn’t praying and believing, some of them found God and found a religion. I personally don’t believe in that. I believe that you should do the right thing. You don’t need God to do the right thing. I know I did some terrible things that I’m not proud of, but I don’t need God to tell me to do the right thing. I just got to do better. People, assume that when you are an atheist that you are just a bad person. And I got to remind them, I know a lot of terrible priests and preachers and so forth. But with that being said, I respect religion. If you say we want to pray over dinner, I’m going to nod my head and close my eyes. I respect your right to believe and I just need people to respect the fact that I don’t.”
As we celebrate the 50th anniversary of hip-hop, you have to recognize Peter Gunz and Lord Tariq as one of its pioneers. The song quintessentially repping a hood Deja Vu (Uptown Baby) went platinum and set a trend.
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The soft R&B love song “Be My Lady” was also a fan favorite.
“Ironically, we had R. Kelly on that song first but they swapped him out for Jagged Edge because we was having a hard time clearing them. But that’s his song.”
After that success, the money and fame didn’t reign down on them again.
“It was a lot of the stuff we went through with the label (Columbia),” Peter explains to EURweb. “Them really not backing the album and not really standing behind us after Uptown. A few people went in like Jay Z and demanded what they deserve but that was one out of thousands. So you got the rest of us who make twenty cents a record. I’m thinking twenty cents a record is a big deal because coming out of the South Bronx, you never had any money. And do the math, they made their money back just on the single but they’ll tell us we didn’t recoup, right? There was a lot of cheating going on. I got kind of gun-shy after seeing the other dark side of the music industry. ”
But at first, it seemed like a dream.
“We were kind of spoiled. I’ve been rapping since I was twelve years old, didn’t get a hit record till I was 26 or 27. It may seem like overnight for some people, but for me, that was a long journey to that song. And we were spoiled it was a hit without us having to really do the things that people have to do. Imagine to go from a musician that’s searching for a record deal to having choices, million dollar deals on the table, but at the end of the day they were not good to the artists.”
And the tragedy is that for many young hip-hop artists today that is still the reality. Meanwhile, Peter is still making beats and is planning some collaborations with his talented firstborn Cory Gunz, signed to Lil Wayne’s label.
“I was so proud when he was on Times Square rapping with Tuenchi,” says Peter. “He’s one of the most talented rappers I know and I’m not just saying that cuz I’m his dad.”
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“Now, sadly, he got that gun charge. He got probation, but he’s still a felon and he caught a gun charge the same age I caught a gun charge. Is that crazy? That’s why I tell people, you have to teach your kids, especially Black men. You gotta set better examples. We gotta stop doing, ‘I don’t want my kid to be like me.’ I told Cory, look, man, you don’t want to get tattoos. You’re going to regret them. He tattooed his body up. You don’t want to get in a rap game I told him. It’s a wicked game. He raps. You want to stay in school. He drops out of school. You don’t want to carry a gun because if you get caught with a gun. It’s three to nine and he gets caught with a gun. So everything that I did, he did, and it’s because I led by example. So we just got to start setting better examples.”
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Life can take you on interesting journeys and Peter ended up dominating reality TV. Fans were addicted to watching his romantic triangle on “Love and Hip Hop” between Tara and Amina.
“It wasn’t in my plan. My plans were to be on TV. Maybe movies, sitcoms or something. It wasn’t reality TV. And while a lot of the drama can be fake with fake storylines, mine was a lot more real than it should have been.”
These days Peter has a good relationship with both Tara and Amina.
“That’s them,” he reveals. “Tara is very mature, very sweet, and although she’s anxious, she wasn’t happy with the situation, she’s like ‘let me put the kids ahead. It’s not their fault.’ And the kids are siblings, so they should get to know one another. But she’s human. I know I hurt her badly”
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On the reality show “After Happily Ever After” Peter – with the help of Tara – hooks up with a woman named Thelma. So what happened after the cameras stopped rolling?
“We were cool. Look, she was the one catching a lot of flack because people said Peter Gunz is old and has all these kids. She’s a judge out in Dallas … does well for herself. But when you do these dating shows, you got to kind of get to know people outside of the show because they’re going to be everything you want them to be in the house. But then when you get out there outside the house, you start seeing stuff that you go, maybe we’re not that compatible. I’m not saying that with her but we never gave it that kind of a shot. But we cool and continue to be friends. She even did some trademarking stuff for me. I appreciate that about her.”
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As far as Tara on the show.
“I like Winthorpe. I picked Winthorpe. but it was uncomfortable because yeah, I never lied. I still have feelings for Tara, and, you know, even though I thought this was going to be the test of all tests, she did way better than me keeping her cool and focusing on her person. I was definitely not comfortable.”
As far as Peter knows though, Winthrope and Tara aren’t still together either ladies if you’re interested? He warns,
“I’m a free spirit, I do what I want. I’m spontaneous. I’m really focused now on what I want to leave for my kids. I want to leave them a head start. So I can’t really focus on relationships and women like I used to. Women used to be my priority Now I’m too old to still move like that, but eventually when it’s all said and done, I want to travel the world with someone. I want to go on cruises. I want to see things I’ve never seen before. I don’t want to do this forever. I really want to go and disappear and close my Instagram and all social media and disappear into the sunset.”
So ladies if you’re interested in riding off in the sunset with Peter. Hollla but maybe give him a few years lol.
And sorry fellas, Peter says he gets heavy DMs from guys ” But fellas that’s not my thing. I’m a serious heterosexual man. Please. I appreciate the love, but I don’t want it.”
Peter has ten children. EURweb asked him if he was trying to catch up with Nick Cannon who notoriously has 12.
“Nick caught up to me is what even happened. I saw Nick one day. I think he was on number four then I was like, yo, bro, what are you trying to do? You tryin’ to catch up to me? He said no, never. Now He surpassed me.”
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What’s next for Peter is new music and collaborations with his son Cory. He may also return to “Cheaters.”
And with Peter, you never know what new reality show he might pop up on. He’s also jumping into the podcast game.
“I don’t want to talk about it too much, but I got this little kind of podcast thing I got coming up. it’s a different format than the regular podcast, and I own it. I love owning my own bag.”
Edited for clarity. You can catch the full conversation in the video immediately above and find out why they called him “Prince of the Hood.” And please don’t forget to subscribe to Jazmyn Summers’ youtube. Spotlight edited by Patrick House films.
Jazmyn Summers – Instagram Interview/article by Jazmyn Summers. Follow her @jaztalk1 on Instagram and Facebook. She is no longer using Twitter due to the increased racism on the site which she believes is a result of Elon Musk’s policies.
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