It has been a rough week for Benzino. He has been firing off tweets and social media posts to defend his name, but in the process, he's also created even more controversy for himself. His ongoing beef with 50 Cent boiled over after the Power mogul suggested that Benzino had some sort of relationship with trans model and actress Shauna Brooks.
The controversy has continued to mount, especially after a video of Shauna allegedly on the phone with Benzino went viral. More recently, alleged DMs or text exchanges between Benzino and Shauna also surfaced, causing the former to explode online with offensive comments about the transgender community.
Benzino accused Brooks of falsifying the messages and issued several public threats that caused some of his tweets to be flagged for violating rules. Music icon and Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kandi Burruss sat down with Benzino on her show Speak On It to clear up any misconceptions. They covered his career at length and spoke about his stints on reality television, but it was only a matter of time before Burruss took a giant leap into the topic of Benzino's comments about transgender people as well as Brooks.
He spoke about working on the same upcoming film with Brooks and explained that Shauna asked for his number and called him to rent out a location for an event. They talked business and spoke about knowing the same people from Love & Hip Hop, and Benzino claimed that was their first conversation, let alone his first chat with a trans person.
"That you know of," said Kandi. She told Benzino that there are plenty of trans people who don't tell anyone about their pasts, and that did not sit right with Benzino.
"It's not about having a label on they shirt, but if they gonna mess with straight people, then yes, they need to let people know that they're [trans]," said Benzino emphatically. "If you're a trans woman in society it is your responsibility to let everybody know that you're a trans woman. It's up to them if they still want to mess around with you." He also argued that once trans women stop "taking pills," they're no longer women.
Benzino did note that he was aware that Shauna was trans before their conversation, but it was a topic he claimed never came up. This excerpt is but a brief snippet of a much larger conversation, so watch Benzino and Kandi Burruss chop it up below.