Why Exactly Did Xscape's Tamika Scott Apologize to Kandi Burruss?

As viewers will see in their new series Xscape: Still Kickin' It, premiering November 5 at 9/8c, Kandi Burruss, Tiny Cottle and sisters Tamika Scott and LaTocha Scott have some old drama that they need to try and put behind them in order to move forward. The most painful one involved allegations that Tamika made about Kandi breaking up the group on New York radio station Hot 97 in 2007, which they both discussed in the 2015 TV One documentary Unsung. 

"Kandi, between 2000 all the way up to 2007, she would do interviews saying Tocha broke up the group... and I'm like, that's not true," Tamika recalled. "I had to protect my sister and so I did an interview and let it rip."

Kandi had maintained that LaTocha's solo aspirations were what originally doomed Xscape, but in the Hot 97 interview, Tamika told former morning host Miss Jones that the group broke up because Kandi slept with their label head Jermaine Dupri and his father, music industry executive Michael Mauldin.

Kandi later admitted in a 2010 interview with radio personality Angela Yee that she had been with Jermaine Dupri, but not his father.

"He and I, we crossed the line of friendship, let's say that," she revealed. "But that had nothing to do with why the group broke up. [Tamika] knew that, she actually came back and apologized to me. It was really like some old hating type of stuff she was doing because, I don't know, I guess because I was still continuously doing something. So she just threw that out there trying to diss me so it wouldn't look like her sister really broke up the group."

"I couldn't believe she would do me like that, I really couldn't," Kandi said tearfully on Unsung, reiterating that LaTocha's solo ambitions were what broke up Xscape. "For her to do that, it just felt like she really had hatred for me and I just didn't want to deal with that no more. I was just like uh uh and I was done."

Tamika apologized to Kandi during her Unsung interview for hurting her, and again apologized to her on stage this past July. But for years Kandi said that Tamika hadn't said she was sorry to her publicly, and that was the main reason why she thought Xscape would never reunite.

"With my group situation, I held onto that for a very long time," Kandi told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen in 2014. "One of my group members said some real foul stuff about me and she never publicly apologized for lying... She apologized personally to me once [but] I feel like it wasn’t genuine.”

Kandi also told the WWHL audience that filming The Real Housewives of Atlanta, even with all of its conflicts, was nowhere near as dramatic as it was being in Xscape. 

"It's nothing compared to our group," she said. "Maaan, I'm like, that's a breeze!" She told Tiny, who was also a guest on the show, "I think I'm more personally invested with you guys and what you guys say, it really affects me, whereas my counterparts on the show, I'm like, ehh!"

Tamika now recognizes that what she did that day on Hot 97 wasn't right and she needed to apologize for it. 

"After the group broke up, Kandi and I, we didn't speak for a while," she told The Daily Dish. "So you know me childishly goes up to the radio station and I say a lot of things that I know and I say some things that I heard. And I just feel like an apology was needed because I don't wanna put something out there that is not true so I definitely wanted to apologize for that. I'm older now, more mature. Should I have done it? No. Should I have handled it another way? Yes, I should have. But I'm just so grateful that we are beyond that moment now and it takes a strong person to apologize and it takes a stronger person to forgive. So I'm hoping and praying that she does forgive me because I forgive myself and I know my Father has forgiven me."