Patti LaBelle: ‘My Pies Are Like Weaves for Black Women’
Let the Internet tell it, Patti LaBelle’s sweet potato pie is the greatest of all time. This is all thanks to a superfan by the name of James Wright Chanel, whose hilarious review of LaBelle’s branded pie went viral, even getting some love from the singer herself. Stores can’t keep the pies on the shelves and we can all assume our feeds will be filled with snaps of LaBelle’s glorious pies come Thanksgiving Day. (Guilty…)
In an interview with the Huffington Post, the “On My Own” singer shares how she’s handled the overwhelming popularity in recent weeks. “In September when the pies came out, they did really, really well, but once James Wright put that video up, it went crazy,” she said. “And I’ve never met James before, nor have I ever spoken to him until I was in London when I called him to thank him for that beautiful footage. And so, he woke a lot of people up.”
That’s putting it lightly. In the wake of Chanel’s love fest, the demand is so high that folks have resorted to selling her pie, which retails for $3.48 exclusively at Walmart, for as much as $50 to $12,000 on EBay. While LaBelle said she’d rather see folks donate that cash to to help needy families during the holiday season, she does, however, see the strength of sales as a litmus test to the soul-satisfying power of her product.
“We Black folks, we don’t spend our money on anything unless we know it’s phenomenal,” she said. “It’s like a Black woman with a weave — she ain’t gonna get that weave and spend all her money for it unless it’s a great weave.” C’mon, Patti!
Now, ordinarily, we’d roast someone hard for a remark like that, but LaBelle clarifies, “And the same thing with the power of the dollar with Black food — and it’s not just Black people buying it, but we’re showing them the power of the Black dollar.”
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(Photos from Left: Nicholas Hunt/Getty Images for Gabrielle's Angel Foundation, Patty’s Good Life/Wal-Mart)
