‘Y’all Don’t Know We Needed This!’: How ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ Helped Kandi Burruss and Tamar Braxton Finally End Their Feud

After more than three weeks of competition, Tamar Braxton has been crowned the winner of “Celebrity Big Brother” season 2. And while taking home the grand prize is great, the singer also won the gift of friendship with Kandi Burruss.

The two singers explained during one of the first “Celebrity BB” episodes that one of the most recent incidents that tore them further apart came on New Year’s Eve 2017.

“Everybody, of course, was letting special guests come in that night,” Burruss said of Braxton wanting to invite Khia and Ts Madison on stage while she opened for Xscape on tour. “And [Tamar] invited someone to come onstage who had basically said a lot of negative things about myself and some other members of our group and also people that we are close to.”

Braxton surmised Burruss simply “ain’t never really liked me like that.”

But by the time the competition was over, the singers had turned over a new leaf.

“We got it back because we wanted it. We wanted to make amends more than we wanted to fight, and that’s for the both of us,” Braxton told Entertainment Weekly Feb. 13. “I just think that’s a testament to life. When you want to get along, when you want to do something, and it’s another person involved, they’ve got to want it too. You’ve got to work at it. And we constantly worked at our relationship in the house. I wasn’t too happy to see her face, I’m not going to lie, when I first saw her. But, in the end, I’m really grateful that she was there. And I’m really grateful of the friendship that we’ve been able to have in the house and outside of the house.”

And doing so was especially touching to Burruss. She was eliminated first during the two-hour season finale Wednesday and told host Julie Chen the healing was a long time coming.

“Y’all don’t know we needed this!” Burruss exclaims. “We really did. … We’ve known each other over 20 years, but we’ve never been like this [gestures closeness with her hands]. And that’s crazy to know somebody that long and you can’t really depend on each other. So, that first week I was like, ‘Oh, this is about to be terrible!’ But then, some kinda way we turned it around and we really supported each other, and I’m so thankful for it.”

Fans were equally as thrilled about the stars patching up their decades-long feud.

“So happy for them.”

“❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️ Black women being positive and supporting each other.”

“So touching!”

https://www.instagram.com/p/Bt2PpfWg21L/

 

Independent journalism still matters.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Back to top