Stars, steak and scrimps: Trick Daddy’s cooking show has Miami all over it

Few people speak their mind like Trick Daddy.

But when you’re from where he’s from, seen what he’s seen, lived what he’s lived, it produces a sort of unshakable confidence.

The fact of the matter is this: Trick wasn’t supposed to make it. So it should come as no surprise that Trick’s cooking series on YouTube, “B---- I Got My Pots” features the Mayor of the 305’s opinion on everything from politics (“Man I’d slap the s--- out of Donald Trump”), to parenting (“Stop ordering takeout all day and feeding them kids chicken nuggets”), to the legal system (“If you kill more than two people at one time, you should die in 10 days. You ain’t need no trial”).

“Even though I didn’t go past the ninth grade in high school, I wasn’t dumb,” Trick told the Miami Herald. “I was a product of my environment that got caught up.”

To some, Trick is like the uncle with no filter who never has a problem speaking his mind — regardless how controversial the opinion. To others, Trick is a hood historian, someone who survived everything America has thrown at him and emerged on top. Maybe he’s somewhere in the middle: a flawed individual with a life-changing talent who wants others to learn from his experience.

“Trick speaks for the people he feels who are struggling, who aren’t making it, aren’t treated fairly,” said Trina, a longtime friend and collaborator. “He’s always going to speak for the underdog.”

With his show, he gets to combine two of his passions — opining and cooking — in a single, hilarious package that could only come straight from Liberty City.

‘Don’t get down here in Miami and get bougie’

Trick Daddy wears many hats in “I Got My Pots” — interviewer, historian, chef. But as the DJ Khaled episode begins to close, his inner food aficionado takes over. In one moment, he has a wooden spoon in each hand and is mixing together his scrimp fried rice. Not shrimp: Trick is a self-described “Winn-Dixie man that was raised off food stamps, WIC and welfare; that’s why I’m a call it scrimp.”

“Don’t get down here in Miami and get bougie,” Trick warned in the episode, clearly unhappy with the people who “all of a sudden don’t eat the stuff that they grew up on.”

Next, he’s sprinkling seasoning on a sizzling steak, not a measuring cup in sight. Trick is relatively silent, intensely concentrating as he puts the final touches on his meal, while co-host Corey “C.O.” Evans keeps the conversation going with DJ Khaled.

These moments showcase how seriously Trick takes cooking. It’s a passion Miami got to truly understand when he opened soul food spot Sunday’s Eatery in 2019 with business partner and chef Latosia Colvin, of The Licking fame. When the restaurant opened, Trick told “Deco Drive” that he wasn’t just a silent celebrity partner: “They’re gonna see see me here. They’re gonna see me in the kitchen. They’re gonna see me everywhere.”

Trick often says he came of age in a “different Miami.” When the rapper, born Maurice Young, spit that he “was raised a little different, y’all” in “I’m a Thug,” that was no embellishment: He was one of his single mother’s 11 children, arrested for selling drugs in middle school and incarcerated for more than a year as a teenager, which he discussed in his autobiography “Magic City: Trials of a Native Son.”

“Broke would have been a nice way to describe my family’s financial situation,” he wrote.

These experiences, however, inspired creativity.

“I was selling newspapers, selling bottles, cans, pumping gas, bagging groceries,” Trick recalled of his early childhood. That ingenuity also lent itself to the kitchen where he had to learn how to put “together a meal” with the bare minimum. “I was used to making a bologna sandwich tasting like a steak sandwich.”

Trick’s upbringing also laid the foundation for his career: the voice of Miami streets, a position he has held down for more than a quarter of a century.

“I am Miami because they believe me, they know I’m telling the truth because they witnessed the same things that I rap about,” Trick said. “They learned the same way that I learned.”

Across eight studio albums, he established himself as Florida’s first gangster rapper.

“Trick really just represented us for real,” Miami rapper and Slip-N-Slide artist Mike Smiff said. The way Trick rapped about the struggle — “His album cover was him on a food stamp,” Smiff recalled. “How real is that?” — made him a hood hero to many.

His music has inspired everyone from Jeezy to Rick Ross to Kodak Black. His Breakfast Club and Drink Champs interviews racked up hundreds of thousands of views. And his 25th anniversary show at Miami’s James L. Knight Center in April 2022 was sold out.

“Trick speaks to not only Miami but [a large part of] the South where we have something to say and what we have to say is so important to the American narrative because if you look at it, Miami is technically going to be the future of America,” said Peter Bailey, the co-author of Trick’s autobiography.

‘I want other people to come out the hood’

“I Got My Pots” is just the latest chapter to Trick’s legend. Anyone who knows him will say cooking has always been a passion of Trick’s. Just ask Khaled.

“On my video shoots, he would cook conch fritters,” DJ Khaled said, which is no surprise to anyone who saw the confidence with which Trick pulled the conch batter from his fridge during his episode of MTV Cribs. “I’d be like ‘Yo it’s time to film’ and he’s in the trailer cooking. I couldn’t even get him out the trailer to come do the song.”

The YouTube series began in early 2022 but the concept had been in the works for more than half a decade, Evans said. Since its debut, the show has generated hundreds of thousands of views thanks to a star-studded guest lineup that has included CeeLo Green, Rick Ross, Safaree, Uncle Luke, Timbaland and Trina.

Watching Trick cook on Facebook over the years is what inspired “I Got My Pots,” Evans said, calling Trick “one of the best cooks in the game.” Evans saw the engagement that Trick had with the audience and knew it was something special. “I was like ‘Bro you can really do this and take this to Hollywood.’ ”

Trick’s show, restaurant Sunday’s Eatery and signature Sunday’s Soul Seasoning blend have positioned the Liberty City representative as an unlikely but much-needed face in the culinary world. With season two of “I Got My Pots” on the way, Evans foresees Trick having a star turn similar to Snoop Dogg and Flava Flav who’ve become household names for more than just music. That, however, likely doesn’t matter to Trick as long as he can continue putting on for his Miami.

“The reason why I keep it real to the hood, I want other people to come out the hood,” Trick said.