As Barrino explained to Mac, he was there for her through it all. "Tyler Perry's actually a good friend of mine. He would call and check up on me. He was one of the ones, when I lost everything, he came and blessed me. And I thank him for that," she explained. The American Idol winner has learned much from the Madea creator about balancing her finances in Hollywood, too, especially with hangers-on at every turn.

She advised, "You look around and you could be working for 10 years, you've got all these people on your team, you're paying this person, that person, and you look up, and you don't have no money in the bank because you've given it to everybody else ... You have a gift and you're allowing everybody else to profit off of the gift." Barrino admitted to Oprah that she thought winning American Idol was the end to all her problems when, really, it introduced a whole new set.