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Patti LaBelle: Fan Reviews Sweet Potato Pie, Video Goes Viral, She Gives Him A Call

By Angela Woods
Published on: 05:01 PST, Nov 15, 2015

American singing legend Patti LaBelle has gone viral, and this time it isn’t for her singing. One of her fans tried one of her newly-marketed sweet potato pies, loved it, made a video, and it went viral. Patti was so impressed and appreciative that she graciously took time out of her busy schedule to give him a call.

YouTube videographer James Wright Chanel had heard so much about the Patti LaBelle “PattiPie” that he decided to meander on over to Wal-Mart to pick one up. He posted his review to Facebook, and as of this writing, it has received close to 8 million views. Fox 32 News in Chicago reports that the mega-popular singing diva gave Chanel a call on Friday morning.

LaBelle has also posted the review on her Facebook page. James told Fox 32 in a Skype interview that he was “crying like a baby” during the call.

“She kept thanking me, she kept thanking me, and she just kept telling me how much she loved me and she just kept telling me to be me. She was like ‘Boy, you could sang!’ “

According to Vibe, many others have also posted reviews, including actor Lance Gross.

James Wright Chanel’s viral video of Patti LaBelle’s newly marketed sweet potato pie posted below. [*Warning: Video does contain swear words.]

https://www.facebook.com/james.wrightchanel/videos/1043591612326830/

During his video review, Chanel intermittently broke out into three of Patti’s songs: “If Only You Knew,” “Isn’t It a Shame,” and “When You’ve Been Blessed.” He also humorously stated that “you will turn into Patti” after eating one of her pies. James has been singing since the age of 3.

Chanel says that he will continue doing food reviews if other items that he comes across are as good as the now-famous Patti LaBelle pie.

According to BET, following Chanel’s lead, other fans are also lining up to purchase the Patti LaBelle sweet potato pies from Walmart and are flooding social media with reviews.

Wikipedia profiles LaBelle as both an author and an actress, in addition to her singing ability. She began her singing career in the early 1960s. Patti has won Grammys for such hits as “The Best is Yet to Come,” “Lady Marmalade,” and “Superwoman,” which she recorded in collaboration with singer Dionne Warwick.

James Wright Chanel, the pie-eating fan who has inspired others to catapult the Patti LaBelle pie into mainstream news, has been on YouTube since 2010 and has close to 16,000 subscribers. He is well known across the Internet for the humor that he injects into each video. RollingOut writes that his first review of LaBelle’s pie was so popular that he has created a second one as a followup, where he proclaims that he did not know that he had eaten the entire first pie and subsequently breaks out in strains of “Over the Rainbow.”

The Patti LaBelle sweet potato pie is sold exclusively at Walmart for roughly $3.50. Online reviews at Walmart.com give it a rating of 4.5 stars. It is described as being made with “California grown sweet potatoes, butter, and spice. Ready to serve. 8 inches.”

It is said that the Patti LaBelle pie has become so popular due to James’ viral videos that they are now flying off Walmart shelves, with some customers purchasing anywhere from five to 30 pies at a time and that roughly 2 million of the pies have been sold as of this date.

Looks like Thanksgiving 2016 may be a very good time for the Patti LaBelle #PattiPie, thanks to a very engaging and humorous James Wright Chanel.

[Photo by Dimitrios Kambouris / Getty Images]

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