‘Claim to Fame’: Gabriel Clears Up His Nick Cannon Baby Mama Clue

[Warning: The following contains MAJOR spoilers for the Claim to Fame Season 2 finale.]

Gabriel Cannon would like to clear up some things from Claim to Fame Season 2.

We predicted early on that the boisterous character was related to Nick Cannon. And as revealed in the August 28 Claim to Fame finale, we were right! Gabriel, last name Cannon, is the younger brother of The Masked Singer judge, but no one in the cast had the chance to test the Cannon theory. Gabriel won Claim to Fame Season 2 when correctly guessing Monay was related to J.B. Smoove. Monay knocked Chris out of the game just moments before by (finally) correctly guessing his relative was Donny Osmond.

TV Insider caught up with Gabriel to talk about his win, and we had to ask him about one lie he spun early on in the season that, for us, made it obvious his famous family member is the Drumline star.

The clue in question came in an early episode, when Gabriel was trying to throw Olivia off his scent. At that point, no one really had any Gabriel theories, and they bought his claim that his relative was an athlete. Gabriel decided to incorporate a bit of truth into his lie by telling a wild story about his “athlete” brother’s several baby mamas, saying the mothers are all friends and that his football-player brother bought them matching jewelry as a group gift.

ABC/John Fleenor

Cannon has made headlines in recent years for frequently having babies with different partners. He’s father to 12 children with six different women, including ex-wife Mariah Carey. (One of his children, 5-month-old son Zen shared with Alyssa Scott, died of brain cancer in 2021, which is why Claim to Fame said he had 11 kids.)

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No one asked Gabriel about baby mamas; the fact that he brought it up unprompted set off a lightbulb for us. And Cannon was the first person we thought of. Gabriel’s big personality, mannerisms, and his appearance made us trust the theory even more.

He tells us the truth about the jewelry story. “Let’s clear that up! That story was from about 15 years ago. That wasn’t about none of the current women in his life,” he says with a laugh. While he says it’s “true true” that Cannon gifted multiple women matching bracelets, he says “it was more about the early Wild ‘N Out girls. I’m going to say that.” (Wild ‘N Out has been running since 2005.)

Drumline was frequently referenced in Gabriel’s clues. There was a snare drum in is bottle clue, another named Zoe Saldaña. In the finale, Gabriel said Drumline changed his life. We asked him how.

“Well, imagine being in the 10th grade, right? You’re dark-skinned, and sometimes you forget to put lotion on and stuff,” he describes. “You’re kind of cute, but you’ve got to squint a little bit to see your cuteness, right? And then your oldest brother puts out this movie called Drumline. He ain’t just the guy that you got to look in the back for, he’s the star of the movie. And the boy was hitting the drums! It completely changed my life. I was handsome after that! Completely changed.”

His family was living in Charlotte, North Carolina at the time. The success of Drumline made them move to California. “That changed my life just from growing up being a country boy, me and my other brothers played sports, but now we’re in Hollywood. It was a complete 180.”

Claim to Fame, Season 2 Streaming Now, Hulu