The producer of VH1's "Love & Hip Hop Atlanta" insists the storylines are real and unscripted despite the barrage of criticism to the contrary.
Mona Scott Young appeared on MTV's RapFix Live on Wednesday to defend the show, which is packed with relationship drama that leaves little to the imagination.
"At its core, this show is dealing with the struggles these women are experiencing," Young told RapFix' Sway, according to Examiner.com. "When I hear that the show is fake, and the show is scripted, it almost negates their very lives because this is their life, this is what they're dealing with."
The producer insists that the pyrotechnics between "baby mama" Mimi Faust and aspiring Latina rapper Joseline over Grammy Award winning producer Stevie J are real, including the abortion Joseline says she had after becoming pregnant by Stevie, whom she continues to love even though he threatens to send her back to the strip club from whence she came.
There's the drama between Lil Scrappy ("Money in the Bank") and Stevie over Stevie's calling Scrappy's baby mama Erica Dixon the ''b" word; the bittersweet clashes between rapper Rasheeda and husband-manager Kirk Frost over the direction of her career; and the drama involving two other hip-hop artists angling for publicity: songbird K Michelle and R&B singer Karlie Redd.
One of the major criticisms is that the show casts black women (and men) and Atlanta in a negative light. Asked former reality show personality Kelly Smith Beaty in a scathing essay on such reality shows with Atlanta as the setting: "How is it that a city which was once the crowning jewel in the story of black America has allowed itself to be positioned as the melting pot of black affliction?"
Young, however, insists her responsibility is "to tell truthful stories."
"I feel a responsibility to stay true to what we set out to do," she told RapFix. "It's not scripted, that's the most ridiculous thing that I hear all the time. There's 40 some odd people on the set, do you think I could get them all to keep a secret? What do they do with the script, eat it?"
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