Jermaine “Maino” Coleman is opening up about why he’s keeping his distance from strip clubs — and the rapper says it came after realizing he was developing unhealthy expectations inside an environment built on fantasy.
During a late-November episode of the Let’s Rap About It podcast, the rapper and radio personality spoke candidly with co-hosts Jim Jones, Dave East, and Fabolous about what he described as a pattern of “manipulative” behavior that led him to rethink his time in clubs.
According to Maino, he often found himself spending large amounts of money on dancers under what he believed were implied promises that the night would continue after the club closed. “You go in the back, you tip, and then they sneak out, jumping into an Uber,” he said on the show, adding that he felt “played” when dancers didn’t follow through on what he interpreted as mutual understanding.
Maino, — who admitted he was sometimes visiting strip clubs up to ten times a month — said it wasn’t just about money. He told the hosts he also began forming emotional connections with dancers, bartenders, and even bouncers, creating attachments that blurred the line between entertainment and personal relationships.
“I had to wean myself out of the strip club,” he said. “You start feeling like there’s something there, and then it’s like… okay, maybe not.”
The conversation quickly expanded into a broader discussion about how easily patrons can confuse the atmosphere of intimacy with actual intimacy. Fabolous pointed out that the trouble often begins when men start calculating what they “deserve” based on how much they’ve spent. “A tip is for the service,” he noted, suggesting that expectations beyond that cross into emotional territory.
After the episode aired, Maino’s comments sparked widespread reaction online — and many social media users pushed back on his interpretation of the situation.
“That’s literally the job,” one commenter wrote, with others emphasizing that dancers are performers, not romantic partners. “You went to a place that sells fantasies and got mad you got sold a fantasy?” another user asked. Some even joked that the women who left with his money showed impressive “business acumen.”
The rapper has spoken publicly about strip-club culture before. In a 2019 interview on No Jumper, he discussed working on a documentary about New York’s strip-club scene and praised the business strategies of dancers who thrive in that world.
