Yandy And Mendeecees Harris Talk About Her Activism
BOSSIP Exclusive: Yandy Says She Feared Her Activism Might Result In Retaliation Against Mendeecees While He Was In Prison
The Harrises are happier than ever despite sheltering at home during these difficult times.
Source: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic / Getty
The couple are part of a four-part Vh1 series called “Love And Hip Hop: Secrets Unlocked” (airing tonight, Monday January 4th at 8pm/7pm CST) along with other popular cast members from the series including Ray J and Princess Love, Kirk and Rasheeda Frost and several others. Due to the current pandemic, the cast self films their reactions to unseen footage and special clips over the series’ history. We spoke with Yandy and and Mendeecees Harris ahead of their upcoming appearance to ask about filming remotely, being cooped up in the house with young children and how Yandy’s social justice work affected them both.
“Quarantine has been interesting to say the least,” Yandy told BOSSIP about the last nine months. “I have learned how my children are in school and I have to take my hat off to the teachers.”
“We had to spend so much time together that we started nagging each other over whose going to cook, whose going to clean, just whose duty to do things,” Mendeecees added. “In the beginning it was frustrating because we didn’t have everything structured and planned out but we worked it out. We just took the time to say we’re stuck in the house together, we just might as well make the best of it and it wasn’t even a problem anymore. we found a way to enjoy the time together until it felt like that was the way it was supposed to be and it just felt normal.”
“Yeah we got our mojo back,” Yandy agreed. “We had our rough patch in the beginning.”
“We wanted to snap each other’s heads off,” Mendeecees shared. “We were like brothers and sisters in the beginning, just arguing –,”
“Over stupid stuff,” Yandy finished her husband’s sentence. “Like ‘why would you put your plate in the sink instead of washing it? Why would you leave your clothes in the bathroom on the floor? Why would you leave the toilet seat up?'”
Fortunately the couple, who wed in a VH1 televised special back in 2015 found their groove and have learned to find the humor in their predicament at every turn, thanks in part to their kids’ big personalities.
“The thing for me that was good was, for me being gone such a long time, it really got me acclimated back into my kids life and my wife’s life, because I left when my kids were fairly young, and now I’m experiencing them at the age of 5 and 8 and getting reintroduced to them in the household, not in the visiting room,” Mendeecees told BOSSIP. “So for my daughter, she is a handful, she’s like a grown person in a little kids body, so every day she is different. She is just – oh my God. I’m still amazed.”
Yandy and Mendeecees son Omere turned 8-years-old in October, and while daughter Skylar will turn five later this month, her parents say she keeps them on their toes with her antics.
“So the other day we’re in the car,” Yandy recalls to BOSSIP. “He’s like ‘Skylar you gotta sit down and keep your seat belt on. Why are you moving so much? Stop moving. Sit down.’ And she said, ‘Dad I’m not that type of girl.’ He was like what? What do you mean?’
“She said, ‘Dad I’m not the sitting type of the girl. I’m moving type of girl,'” Mendeecees added. “I said, ‘What do you mean?’ She said ‘Dad I like to move. I move around a lot. That’s what I like to do. I’m the moving type of girl.’
The couple laughed, and Yandy added a funny detail. She believes Skylar inherited her personality from her grandmother.
“We be in shock all the time over the stuff that comes out that little mouth,” Yandy tells BOSSIP. “She is very Harlem. She takes after my mother-in-law Judy. If you’ve ever seen her on the show, she drove me crazy when I was pregnant with Skylar.
She is a little Judy.”
Hit the flip for more on how Yandy’s activism has affected the family and why the couple was so taken aback by Young Hollywood’s issues with Amara La Negra’s hair.
Source: Jason LaVeris/FilmMagic / Getty
Besides the pandemic, the issues 2020 amplified more than any other were racial injustice and police brutality. Yandy continued her work as an activist by participating in a number of protests throughout the year, often at the risk of her own freedom.
“It’s bittersweet,” Mendeecees told BOSSIP of his wife’s regular sacrifices in the name of justice. “I’m proud of her, but also I’m worried because I’ve seen what’s happened with the protestors. They’re getting locked up, they’re getting ran over by cars, they’re getting violated each and every way that you can think, so when it’s your wife out there on the front lines it’s going to be a natural thing to be worried, especially when I was gone and I was away. I watched her on world news get maced in her face and get carried away and I was real sad and real hurt that these type of things are happening… I felt like she was in a vulnerable state and she wasn’t protected. But at the same time I understand the sacrifice. I understand the cause and her purpose was bigger than me and her.”
In addition to Yandy’s time spent protesting Breonna Taylor’s murder in Louisville, KY, the couple both say her efforts protesting conditions at Brooklyn’s Metropolitan Detention Center last year (where inmates had no heat and electricity) resulted in some the family’s most memorable moments, for good reasons as well as bad.
“I had a lot of people that were at the prison she was at that were like, ‘Thank YOU. I love her. We was freezing and because of her, we got heat.'” Mendeecees recalled to BOSSIP. “Grown men were trying to give me hugs. It was because of her protesting that brought people together; dudes that I probably would have never have talked to . It’s always going to be conflicting because there are two sides. People that are fighting for a cause are not always going to see change right away, but hopefully it affects somebody’s life.”
The stakes were especially high for Yandy when she was protesting Metropolitan last year because the facility is a federal one.
“For me the hardest part was, when I was taking on the federal government, knowing that I had a husband that I love dearly that was within the federal system,” Yandy told BOSSIP. “That was hard because I feared that my family was becoming the sacrificial lamb. I was hoping that with what I was doing that they wouldn’t retaliate against him. That was the hardest thing. As far as what happened, I don’t worry about, ‘Oh I’m going to get hurt or oh I’m going to get pepper sprayed or oh I might get locked up.’ What happens in those moments happens. The hardest thing for me was when I was shedding tears and I was nervous like, ‘It’s on the national news — is this going to affect him?’ That was the scary part for me because he was in another state and I was just hoping he wouldn’t get retaliated against. It got back to him what was happening and to the people he was with, but thankfully he wasn’t affected too terribly by it.
Facing such weighty issues it’s little wonder the couple are among the most centered and calm “Love And Hip Hop” cast members. We asked the pair which of the other cast members they count as friends since the “Love and Hip Hop: Secrets Unlocked” special reunited them with multiple personalities from across the franchises.
“I love Jonathan so much,” Yandy shared with BOSSIP. “He’s become a close friend to both me and Mendecees and our family. My husband and Safaree are really really cool. Me and Erica [Mena] have actually gotten really cool as of lately. Remy is my girl, so I’ve spoken to her several times during the quarantine. I speak to some of the other people who are no longer on the show as well, like Bianca, Mariahlynn, Tara, and people on other franchises as well. I like being friendly, it’s easier to have friends than enemies. I don’t like to have beef and drama.”
Speaking of beef and drama, we couldn’t help but notice both Mendeecees and Yandy react strongly to a clip of Young Hollywood cautioning Amara La Negra that she should edit her hair to be, “More Beyoncé, less Macy Gray,” in one of the upcoming “Secrets Unlocked” episodes.
“Who we are, our skin color, our texture of our hair, make us the beautiful black women that we are,” Yandy told BOSSIP while addressing why the clip was so disturbing to her and her husband. “Now we are versatile, don’t get me wrong. Amara can do an afro and Amara can do a long straight blond wig, but don’t you ever dare tell her she can’t be herself, that she can’t wear the hair and texture that she was born with, because it doesn’t take away from her talent. It accentuates her beauty and it accentuates our culture and who we are. Now I don’t know if at the time if that was her hair or a big afro wig, but we know our culture, we have hair like that, so how dare you ever speak on a black woman’s crown! Them braids used to hide all kind of rice and food to keep us on our journey. There is a reason why we keep our hair how we keep our hair, and every role that our hair has played in our culture and our history is not to be mentioned if you don’t have our hair and if you’re a man, don’t touch it, don’t mention it, don’t speak on it. I feel he was absolutely out of place when he talked about that woman’s hair and I look at it as her crown.”
Well said! Look forward to watching Yandy and Mendeecees and more of the “Love And Hip Hop” gang on VH1 Mondays at 8pm/7pm CST starting tonight.
Check out a clip from the cast below:
