If you see Teyana Taylor getting a little freaky onstage at one of her live shows, just know that her husband, Iman Shumpert, doesn't have a problem with it. It's a common thing for Taylor to invite a female fan onstage before engaging in a some naughty, lapdance behavior in front of a live audience, and the singer chatted openly about it when she caught up with Joe Budden on Pull Up.
Budden said he thought of it as a double standard, considering Taylor probably wouldn't be okay if Shumpert did the same thing. "If I go to a show, I’m in the audience chilling, sippin’ a lil' something, and homegirl says, "Hey! Come on stage!,' and I come on stage and I get freaked, I think my partner would have...I think I would get a long text," he said. "Like a paragraph text about that. That was my beef about it. I’m cool, but it’s a double standard because you wouldn’t be cool."
"Yeah, it wouldn’t," Taylor replied. "The same way y’all n****s could pull y’all s**t out on the sidewalk and go and pee, it takes a lot more work for a b***h to have to pop a squat behind a car. Y’all n****s will just go and stand there and do y’all thing." Taylor says that double standards exist in various forms, but as long as she's not grinding on a dude, it really shouldn't be a big deal—and the decision to bring women onstage was a compromise between she and her husband.
"What I’m trying to explain to you is me bringing a female up on stage was a respect thing for my husband," Taylor said. "It’s very convenient. If I’m like a baby Janet right, and everybody knows these are my shows, as a wife, would you rather me bring up n****s and give them lapdances or bring up b****es and give them lapdances? It’s entertainment. That’s like me saying, 'This is entertainment so technically it’s my job so I’m going to bring up another n****a.'"
She continued, "I feel like it’s a yes, no and negotiations. If you say yes, mean it. If you say yes, mean it and don’t hang that over the person’s head. If you say no, don’t feel bad about saying no. If you’re willing to negotiate, you find a happy medium. The negotiation in marriage is, 'Ok, this is my job, this is my brand, this is my image. How do I find a happy medium? How do I negotiate? Ok! I won’t ever bring another n***a up on stage ever again! So, why not do it with females?'"
For people who think that Taylor's lapdances are anything more than a performance, she's here to burst your bubble. "I’m very professional, and after every lapdance of anybody I’ve ever given a lapdance to, it’s never been anything more than that,” she said. “I’m very like, ‘Lapdance. Alright, on to the next song.’ It ain’t no kiki-ing. Next record. This s**t is a job. It’s a job and I think that people don’t understand that. But when you’re passionate about your job, and you’re passionate about entertaining people and this is your show, it is what it is."
The same way I perform 'Never Would Have Made It' and I cry, I mean that, but that’s a part of my show where it’s going to get real. It’s still a part of entertainment and it’s a job," she said. "It’s an off-and-on switch with everything. Back to the lapdances, everything is just an on-and-off switch, whether I’m acting, or I’m performing or I have to entertain people at a party. It’s like, people pay you to entertain and turn up.”