The Hip Hop community felt a break in its beat as the Confessions of a Video Vixen, a first major tell-all book from Karrine “Superhead” Steffans first released in 2005. The book provides insight into Steffans’
tortured past while outlining her escapades, trials and tribulations as
a video girl in the overly-misogynistic and competitively materialistic
world of commercial Hip Hop. A year later, the mother of Nas’s child and Jay-Z’s former lover, Carmen Bryan, released her own literary exhibition, It’s No Secret. Despite the negative and one-sided labels attached to both Steffans and Bryan,
one fact remains: they have exposed the vulnerability, and inadequacy
of some of the best of the best in industry while challenging the
validity of their character and even, appeal. The books forced the
media to take a look at the commercial aspects of the Hip Hop industry
as it firmly stands in its comfortable nest of greed and misogyny. A
year later, the eagle strikes again.
This time it comes by way of an intriguing Canadian whose resume includes the bullets of a writer, a video model (who can forget Snoop and Pharrell’s “Drop it Like it’s Hot?”), a real estate agent and a mother of a seven-year old son whom she shares with Canadian rapper Saukrates. Alana Wyatt-Smith, also known as “Mrs. Mos Def” in her recent memoir, Breaking the Code of Silence, describes various relationships she has had with NBA players (including Antawn Jamison and Jermaine O’Neal) as well as abuse allegations against her husband, rapper/actor Mos Def. The book expands to outline Mrs. Wyatt-Smith’s childhood and teen years including sexual and physical abuse, as well as objectified roles in which she was starring various leads including stripper and one night stand, as well as girlfriend and wife. HipHopDX catches up with Mrs. Mos Def to decipher her intentions for the book, the harsh double-standard in the entertainment industry and the night with the traveling man that led her to filing for divorce.
HipHopDX: Why did you write the book?
Alana Wyatt-Smith: It’s a message that I’m trying to send out – helping women in similar situations that choose to feel like by being with these men and hanging close to these men…it’s a matter of yourself feeling important for that split second that you tend to gravitate to these people. And I want to let these women know that the lifestyle of glitz and glamor is not what it’s cut out to be and that everything you’re looking for in these men you can find within yourself.
DX: “These men.” Who are you referring to?
AWS: NBA players, musicians. And I can only speak from personal experience in terms of men I’ve actually been with. And I have to say my husband being an artist, and my son’s father being an artist - at least those two in reference to musicians - but the rest, I’ve only really talked to NBA players.
DX: What made you gravitate toward entertainers in the first place?
AWS: I feel like it’s something – and I’ve learned this after soul searching and looking within myself – that a lot of it is because of low self-esteem. Coming from a situation where you don’t feel worthy and for just 15 minutes, by being on one of these players’ arms, you feel worthy, you feel like you’re noticed; you feel important. And this is what it used to do for me personally. And I know that [for] a lot of the girlfriends that I have in the circle that do the same thing, for them, it does the same thing. It’s almost like a drive; it’s an adrenalin rush to be chosen, to be hanging around these types of men.
DX: I’ve mention to a couple of my close friends who are rappers that we’re doing an interview, and their immediate response was “another Superhead”, which is a similar response many other people have after hearing about your book. You stated that your publication is different from Karrine Steffans’ and from Carmen Bryan’s – how?
AWS: A lot of names that are mentioned in their books are similar ones that are mentioned in mine but the difference between us is that I’m not whipping the sheets off of my high-profile affairs. The only reason that names in this book that are there are because this is a self-help book. It’s supposed to be a motivational book with some juicy gossip details. A lot of the purpose behind it that makes the difference is that out of respect first and foremost for these men and their wives and their children – I wouldn’t put their business out there and I wouldn’t want it to affect their families. Secondly, I don’t find [myself] even telling so much as my best friends about my sexual relations with even my boyfriend, whether he’s famous or not, so I don’t think that 30 million people need to know that. Again, it separates it because I’m not telling you what you want to hear, what you’re looking for. I’m telling you what I did – which Karrine and Carmen do to a certain extent – but I’m also telling you how I came out of that and how I was able to realize that that wasn’t a worthy lifestyle and it wasn’t permitting; especially being a mother, which we all our to children, myself, Karrine and Carmen, and they have their own opinions and I have my opinion firsthand.
I had to re-edit this book seven times before it was released just so my son, an avid reader, it was good enough for his eyes and ears to read and see. The strong difference between myself and Karrine is that I’m talking about the luxury and the lifestyle but I’m also explaining to these young women to look at some of us girls who have the fortunate advantage of hanging around Shaquille O’Neal and Jermaine O’Neal and Antawn Jamison, just to name a few, and being married to Mos Def, the advantage is not for the public to recognize; the advantage is how is it making me feel as a person, as a woman and as a female? And I’m letting these women know that you can still be yourself. I think that it was only fair that I was able to speak out because I’ve been the one night stand, I’ve been the groupie, I’ve been the wife, I’ve been the girlfriend, I’ve been the main girl, I’ve been on all aspects of the fence with these gentlemen; and the hype around NBA players is not what it’s cut off to be as far as these women wanting and thinking it makes them better as a person. It’s not fair and I don’t want these women like Karrine Steffans and Carmen to give that message out: this is how you feel great; it’s cool to talk about relationships with other people.
DX: You just mentioned that you didn’t release the names of some of these players out of respect for their wives and children. An obvious question would be whether you were thinking of their wives and children when you had relations with these men?
AWS: Any of the three NBA members that I talk about in my book were not married at the time. They married after myself and Mos Def married. And that’s been a rule that I firmly stood by. I would never want to happen to me what I do to these women. And to my knowledge and my understanding, none of these men were married at the time. Antawn Jamison and Jermaine O’Neal, which I shared very long relations with, they all got married after I was married to Mos Def. So to answer the question, they weren’t married to my understanding. They still have children, and you do to others as you would want done onto you. The reason I didn’t put first and last names in there was simply for the reason that I don’t want these gentlemen to think I’m calling them out or using their name to sell myself – as Mos Def thinks right now – he thinks I’m using his name to sell the book. And honestly, I have to say in big bold letters, if it were a tell-all book, Karrine and Carmen and all those girls would have nothing on me. It wouldn’t be 118 pages, it would be 1,000 pages. There would be names mentioned, there would be grimy details, stories that I’m willing to share if asked in an interview but not stuff that I felt I needed to put in a book for everybody to read. I’m not talking about any of my sexual relations that I’ve had with any of the gentlemen in my book. I don’t talk about flipping the mattress three times with Shaquille. I don’t mention the amounts of money these men have given me. And Shaquille O’Neal called me and was the first person to congratulate me on the release of my book. I’m not here to preach, but at some point there’s gotta be women out there to understand that this lifestyle is not a winning lifestyle.
DX: You say it’s not a winning lifestyle, but in all fairness, as you were involved with the rappers and basketball players, you were receiving a steady income whether it was a settlement from Mos Def or whether the athletes were giving out a certain amount of money. And now the book is coming out. Where does that fall into your declaration of “it’s not worth it” versus it is? A lucrative amount of money can be made and girls and women may be looking at it from the perspective of “I may not be respected but at least I’m getting paid.” How would you justify or comment on that?
AWS: You said it right there. That’s always been my thing: if you’re doing what you’re doing, at least get paid for it. Now, a lot of people may say “now you’re a hoe,” “intercourse for money,” but you’re servicing these men whether you like to believe it or not. I know that I was going down there and I was going to be involved with these men, maybe sexually sometimes, maybe not at others. But I knew that I was going down there for a purpose. And my return was, “Okay, I have babysitters, I have bills,” I have the same needs and same walks of everyday life that you have, and I’m gonna need some sort of assistance before I even get on the airplane to go down there. So my whole thing is, if you’re gonna do it, enjoy it, but make sure that at the end of the day you don’t come home from a four-day trip with these guys, and your lights are cut off and you can’t pay your phone bill and your kids are hungry. I’m not knocking it but be smart about it.
A man – or a person in general – is going to treat you exactly how you carry yourself. And I find with a lot of these girls is that they make themselves openly, readily available to these men for nothing, and letting their cards on the table, saying basically “here I am, take me,” and you find yourself being accepted like that and then these men lose respect for you. You have to make them want you just as much as the next man. I’ve had guys that are just regular Joes that call me, text me every single day of the week, five times a day [just as much] as an Indiana Pacers or a Lakers guy. I find that however you would treat the next guy is exactly how you would treat this guy not just because he’s famous but because he shouldn’t be treated any less.
DX: Have you heard from Mos? How does he feel about the literary limelight he’s in?
AWS: Mos and I have actually been on great terms in the last few days. [Laughing]. I don’t know how he’s feeling lately but the last time we spoke, he didn’t have much to comment on it. And I said to him “read the book before you knock it” because at the same time it would look like I’m contradicting myself to have chosen to marry somebody in 96 hours without knowing them, and then turn around and speak negative or badly about them; it doesn’t really say much for me as a person. I want him to understand: it’s not what you think it is; I’m not bashing you, I’m not talking bad about you; however, it is a life story book and it does detail my life up until recent, and I wasn’t gonna leave anything out. And I could have gone into gruesome details about what happened between him and I when– I don’t want to say assault, I don’t want to say abuse, I don’t know what choice of words to use – I guess when the altercation happened.
DX: Was he physically violent? Let’s clear that up.
AWS: He was forceful, he touched me, yes he did. I’m a little skeptical on what to say. Headlines are saying “wife-beater,” “abusive.” I don’t want them to get the impression that he’s a wife-beater or he’s abusive - I’m also not justifying it. It was a situation where he got aggressive. He came home from shooting a movie one night and pinned me down to the bed and was on top of me, spitting and yelling, ranting and raving. I kicked him to get off of him; I ran to the door to get help...
DX: What was the cause of his anger?
AWS: We were on set shooting a movie of his in Brazil. And I’ve been on the set with him every single day and night for almost two weeks. And my body is not used to staying up late and being maxed out 14 hours a day. So while we were shooting, I decided I was gonna leave and go back to the hotel to get some rest. I couldn’t tell him because he was in the middle of a take. So I told security to tell him. I went to the hotel, I took a shower, I went to sleep, because from when we got married up until this point in Brazil, it was chaos. My life basically became his career; our marriage became his career. I took the advantage to relax, be alone with myself. He got home at seven o’clock in the morning from set, got on top of me and just lost it. To this day, I will never know his purpose because I immediately flew back to Canada by myself from Brazil and filed for divorce.
DX: You had no discussion in the meantime?
AWS: I had no discussion because this wasn’t the first time he put his hands on me. It happened once in New York three weeks before Brazil. And I was through with it. Because prior to Mos, my very first relationship was with a gentleman who I cried many, many nights to Mos about, who was very, very abusive and Mos knew that getting angry at me, yelling at me, and lifting a hand on me, was a deal-breaker. It was a no-question, no nothing because I’ve been there and I almost lost my life in my first relationship. So I wasn’t prepared to take that risk again. So I got my stuff, packed it and returned to Canada. We reconciled four times after that. I notice that a lot of people are saying that I’m his ex-wife. There has been nothing close to a divorce yet.
DX: You stated that you received a settlement of $115,000 but at the same time he will not sign the divorce papers?
AWS: He thinks I want a divorce because of money. His perspective is “Why? Is this the price I have to pay for coming to Canada and falling deeply in love with you?” He suggested counseling and I have been with it a few times; not all the time but a few times. And he paid me what he was supposed to pay me. And again, settling for that kind of money I hope kills a lot of curiosity and a lot of allegations from people saying I married him for his money; because truth be told, he’s done three major screenplays since we’ve been married and the judge was willing to take a pen and paper and go right down the half of the sheet, and I said no, I don’t want his money. I didn’t marry him for his money. I just want to walk away to put myself through school, to find myself a nice little place and pay off my mortgage for a year, get myself a nice little car that I can pay off; not a penny less, not a penny more. And $115,000, Mos spends that on a hotel room in a week.
DX: Is there a double-standard in the Hip Hop industry? As we’ve seen, when an ex-girlfriend releases a book, no matter what the she says, she is attacked. And the men these women write about are never seen as antagonists, no matter what they do; whether they cheat, beat their wives, pay for sex, etc.
AWS: He has a #1 hit or eight weeks on the Billboard chart. I’m not a Hip Hop fan, I’ve never been a Hip Hop fan. Strangely enough, as hypocritical as it sounds, my child’s father and my husband are both very-well known Hip Hop artists. I’m not particularly a fan of the music because I do find it extremely degrading. Again, I’ll go back to what I said earlier. How a woman projects herself is how she’s received. When I did the “Drop it Like it’s Hot” video, I was cast as the lead girl; flew all the way to Los Angeles on a five hour flight to do that video. And when I got to Los Angeles I found out that I had to drop it like it was hot. And the outfit that they had selected for me, they had to call other girls in on the spot around the local L.A. area to come and take that spot because I will never stand in front of the screen and degrade myself like that. I’ve been cast on hundreds of videos, and I’ve probably turned down out of 100, 95 of them.
DX: Because of that reason?
AWS: Because of that reason. I’m not going to agree with something and turn around and bad talk it; that’s just not what I would do. That would kind of take away everything I’m trying to speak on in this book.
At the end of the day, the entertainment industry is very submissive. Everybody tries to cater to the entertainment industry. I try to avoid the blogs, I try to avoid a lot of what’s being said about me on the internet, but there’s one thing that really caught my attention the other day. Somebody said – and I couldn’t believe that a female spoke out and said that – “he should have beat that hoe, he should have beat her to a pulp, that’s what you get Mos Def for marrying a stripper-hoe.” Where is the justification in that? Where is the logic in that? And where is your dignity and your self-respect for saying something like that? You’re still a woman and you’re saying that based on the fact that Mos Def hit me so it’s okay. Again, I don’t want to get the message out that he’s a wife-beater, that he’s an abuser, or anything; but again, I don’t care if you’re Mos Def, I don’t care who you are. If you’re feeding me, clothing me, you’re doing whatever, that does not give you the right to disrespect me or treat me any less than who I am as a person.
DX: Is Mos the type of person his fans think he is?
AWS: I have to agree with that. That’s specifically why I said “yes” to Mos. And I’ve had four proposals from men way more well off than Mos. I said “yes” to Mos because his personality, his humbleness – he’s not a flashy guy – his love for his children, for everybody around him; he is very sincere. He is a commodity in his community. I loved everything he stood for as a man, not as Mos Def, but as an individual. And a lot of people are saying, “Why yes to Mos and why no to someone who makes 32 million a year?” Because it was not about the money. If that was the case, I would just be single right now.
This time it comes by way of an intriguing Canadian whose resume includes the bullets of a writer, a video model (who can forget Snoop and Pharrell’s “Drop it Like it’s Hot?”), a real estate agent and a mother of a seven-year old son whom she shares with Canadian rapper Saukrates. Alana Wyatt-Smith, also known as “Mrs. Mos Def” in her recent memoir, Breaking the Code of Silence, describes various relationships she has had with NBA players (including Antawn Jamison and Jermaine O’Neal) as well as abuse allegations against her husband, rapper/actor Mos Def. The book expands to outline Mrs. Wyatt-Smith’s childhood and teen years including sexual and physical abuse, as well as objectified roles in which she was starring various leads including stripper and one night stand, as well as girlfriend and wife. HipHopDX catches up with Mrs. Mos Def to decipher her intentions for the book, the harsh double-standard in the entertainment industry and the night with the traveling man that led her to filing for divorce.
HipHopDX: Why did you write the book?
Alana Wyatt-Smith: It’s a message that I’m trying to send out – helping women in similar situations that choose to feel like by being with these men and hanging close to these men…it’s a matter of yourself feeling important for that split second that you tend to gravitate to these people. And I want to let these women know that the lifestyle of glitz and glamor is not what it’s cut out to be and that everything you’re looking for in these men you can find within yourself.
DX: “These men.” Who are you referring to?
AWS: NBA players, musicians. And I can only speak from personal experience in terms of men I’ve actually been with. And I have to say my husband being an artist, and my son’s father being an artist - at least those two in reference to musicians - but the rest, I’ve only really talked to NBA players.
DX: What made you gravitate toward entertainers in the first place?
AWS: I feel like it’s something – and I’ve learned this after soul searching and looking within myself – that a lot of it is because of low self-esteem. Coming from a situation where you don’t feel worthy and for just 15 minutes, by being on one of these players’ arms, you feel worthy, you feel like you’re noticed; you feel important. And this is what it used to do for me personally. And I know that [for] a lot of the girlfriends that I have in the circle that do the same thing, for them, it does the same thing. It’s almost like a drive; it’s an adrenalin rush to be chosen, to be hanging around these types of men.
DX: I’ve mention to a couple of my close friends who are rappers that we’re doing an interview, and their immediate response was “another Superhead”, which is a similar response many other people have after hearing about your book. You stated that your publication is different from Karrine Steffans’ and from Carmen Bryan’s – how?
AWS: A lot of names that are mentioned in their books are similar ones that are mentioned in mine but the difference between us is that I’m not whipping the sheets off of my high-profile affairs. The only reason that names in this book that are there are because this is a self-help book. It’s supposed to be a motivational book with some juicy gossip details. A lot of the purpose behind it that makes the difference is that out of respect first and foremost for these men and their wives and their children – I wouldn’t put their business out there and I wouldn’t want it to affect their families. Secondly, I don’t find [myself] even telling so much as my best friends about my sexual relations with even my boyfriend, whether he’s famous or not, so I don’t think that 30 million people need to know that. Again, it separates it because I’m not telling you what you want to hear, what you’re looking for. I’m telling you what I did – which Karrine and Carmen do to a certain extent – but I’m also telling you how I came out of that and how I was able to realize that that wasn’t a worthy lifestyle and it wasn’t permitting; especially being a mother, which we all our to children, myself, Karrine and Carmen, and they have their own opinions and I have my opinion firsthand.
I had to re-edit this book seven times before it was released just so my son, an avid reader, it was good enough for his eyes and ears to read and see. The strong difference between myself and Karrine is that I’m talking about the luxury and the lifestyle but I’m also explaining to these young women to look at some of us girls who have the fortunate advantage of hanging around Shaquille O’Neal and Jermaine O’Neal and Antawn Jamison, just to name a few, and being married to Mos Def, the advantage is not for the public to recognize; the advantage is how is it making me feel as a person, as a woman and as a female? And I’m letting these women know that you can still be yourself. I think that it was only fair that I was able to speak out because I’ve been the one night stand, I’ve been the groupie, I’ve been the wife, I’ve been the girlfriend, I’ve been the main girl, I’ve been on all aspects of the fence with these gentlemen; and the hype around NBA players is not what it’s cut off to be as far as these women wanting and thinking it makes them better as a person. It’s not fair and I don’t want these women like Karrine Steffans and Carmen to give that message out: this is how you feel great; it’s cool to talk about relationships with other people.
DX: You just mentioned that you didn’t release the names of some of these players out of respect for their wives and children. An obvious question would be whether you were thinking of their wives and children when you had relations with these men?
AWS: Any of the three NBA members that I talk about in my book were not married at the time. They married after myself and Mos Def married. And that’s been a rule that I firmly stood by. I would never want to happen to me what I do to these women. And to my knowledge and my understanding, none of these men were married at the time. Antawn Jamison and Jermaine O’Neal, which I shared very long relations with, they all got married after I was married to Mos Def. So to answer the question, they weren’t married to my understanding. They still have children, and you do to others as you would want done onto you. The reason I didn’t put first and last names in there was simply for the reason that I don’t want these gentlemen to think I’m calling them out or using their name to sell myself – as Mos Def thinks right now – he thinks I’m using his name to sell the book. And honestly, I have to say in big bold letters, if it were a tell-all book, Karrine and Carmen and all those girls would have nothing on me. It wouldn’t be 118 pages, it would be 1,000 pages. There would be names mentioned, there would be grimy details, stories that I’m willing to share if asked in an interview but not stuff that I felt I needed to put in a book for everybody to read. I’m not talking about any of my sexual relations that I’ve had with any of the gentlemen in my book. I don’t talk about flipping the mattress three times with Shaquille. I don’t mention the amounts of money these men have given me. And Shaquille O’Neal called me and was the first person to congratulate me on the release of my book. I’m not here to preach, but at some point there’s gotta be women out there to understand that this lifestyle is not a winning lifestyle.
DX: You say it’s not a winning lifestyle, but in all fairness, as you were involved with the rappers and basketball players, you were receiving a steady income whether it was a settlement from Mos Def or whether the athletes were giving out a certain amount of money. And now the book is coming out. Where does that fall into your declaration of “it’s not worth it” versus it is? A lucrative amount of money can be made and girls and women may be looking at it from the perspective of “I may not be respected but at least I’m getting paid.” How would you justify or comment on that?
AWS: You said it right there. That’s always been my thing: if you’re doing what you’re doing, at least get paid for it. Now, a lot of people may say “now you’re a hoe,” “intercourse for money,” but you’re servicing these men whether you like to believe it or not. I know that I was going down there and I was going to be involved with these men, maybe sexually sometimes, maybe not at others. But I knew that I was going down there for a purpose. And my return was, “Okay, I have babysitters, I have bills,” I have the same needs and same walks of everyday life that you have, and I’m gonna need some sort of assistance before I even get on the airplane to go down there. So my whole thing is, if you’re gonna do it, enjoy it, but make sure that at the end of the day you don’t come home from a four-day trip with these guys, and your lights are cut off and you can’t pay your phone bill and your kids are hungry. I’m not knocking it but be smart about it.
A man – or a person in general – is going to treat you exactly how you carry yourself. And I find with a lot of these girls is that they make themselves openly, readily available to these men for nothing, and letting their cards on the table, saying basically “here I am, take me,” and you find yourself being accepted like that and then these men lose respect for you. You have to make them want you just as much as the next man. I’ve had guys that are just regular Joes that call me, text me every single day of the week, five times a day [just as much] as an Indiana Pacers or a Lakers guy. I find that however you would treat the next guy is exactly how you would treat this guy not just because he’s famous but because he shouldn’t be treated any less.
DX: Have you heard from Mos? How does he feel about the literary limelight he’s in?
AWS: Mos and I have actually been on great terms in the last few days. [Laughing]. I don’t know how he’s feeling lately but the last time we spoke, he didn’t have much to comment on it. And I said to him “read the book before you knock it” because at the same time it would look like I’m contradicting myself to have chosen to marry somebody in 96 hours without knowing them, and then turn around and speak negative or badly about them; it doesn’t really say much for me as a person. I want him to understand: it’s not what you think it is; I’m not bashing you, I’m not talking bad about you; however, it is a life story book and it does detail my life up until recent, and I wasn’t gonna leave anything out. And I could have gone into gruesome details about what happened between him and I when– I don’t want to say assault, I don’t want to say abuse, I don’t know what choice of words to use – I guess when the altercation happened.
DX: Was he physically violent? Let’s clear that up.
AWS: He was forceful, he touched me, yes he did. I’m a little skeptical on what to say. Headlines are saying “wife-beater,” “abusive.” I don’t want them to get the impression that he’s a wife-beater or he’s abusive - I’m also not justifying it. It was a situation where he got aggressive. He came home from shooting a movie one night and pinned me down to the bed and was on top of me, spitting and yelling, ranting and raving. I kicked him to get off of him; I ran to the door to get help...
DX: What was the cause of his anger?
AWS: We were on set shooting a movie of his in Brazil. And I’ve been on the set with him every single day and night for almost two weeks. And my body is not used to staying up late and being maxed out 14 hours a day. So while we were shooting, I decided I was gonna leave and go back to the hotel to get some rest. I couldn’t tell him because he was in the middle of a take. So I told security to tell him. I went to the hotel, I took a shower, I went to sleep, because from when we got married up until this point in Brazil, it was chaos. My life basically became his career; our marriage became his career. I took the advantage to relax, be alone with myself. He got home at seven o’clock in the morning from set, got on top of me and just lost it. To this day, I will never know his purpose because I immediately flew back to Canada by myself from Brazil and filed for divorce.
DX: You had no discussion in the meantime?
AWS: I had no discussion because this wasn’t the first time he put his hands on me. It happened once in New York three weeks before Brazil. And I was through with it. Because prior to Mos, my very first relationship was with a gentleman who I cried many, many nights to Mos about, who was very, very abusive and Mos knew that getting angry at me, yelling at me, and lifting a hand on me, was a deal-breaker. It was a no-question, no nothing because I’ve been there and I almost lost my life in my first relationship. So I wasn’t prepared to take that risk again. So I got my stuff, packed it and returned to Canada. We reconciled four times after that. I notice that a lot of people are saying that I’m his ex-wife. There has been nothing close to a divorce yet.
DX: You stated that you received a settlement of $115,000 but at the same time he will not sign the divorce papers?
AWS: He thinks I want a divorce because of money. His perspective is “Why? Is this the price I have to pay for coming to Canada and falling deeply in love with you?” He suggested counseling and I have been with it a few times; not all the time but a few times. And he paid me what he was supposed to pay me. And again, settling for that kind of money I hope kills a lot of curiosity and a lot of allegations from people saying I married him for his money; because truth be told, he’s done three major screenplays since we’ve been married and the judge was willing to take a pen and paper and go right down the half of the sheet, and I said no, I don’t want his money. I didn’t marry him for his money. I just want to walk away to put myself through school, to find myself a nice little place and pay off my mortgage for a year, get myself a nice little car that I can pay off; not a penny less, not a penny more. And $115,000, Mos spends that on a hotel room in a week.
DX: Is there a double-standard in the Hip Hop industry? As we’ve seen, when an ex-girlfriend releases a book, no matter what the she says, she is attacked. And the men these women write about are never seen as antagonists, no matter what they do; whether they cheat, beat their wives, pay for sex, etc.
AWS: He has a #1 hit or eight weeks on the Billboard chart. I’m not a Hip Hop fan, I’ve never been a Hip Hop fan. Strangely enough, as hypocritical as it sounds, my child’s father and my husband are both very-well known Hip Hop artists. I’m not particularly a fan of the music because I do find it extremely degrading. Again, I’ll go back to what I said earlier. How a woman projects herself is how she’s received. When I did the “Drop it Like it’s Hot” video, I was cast as the lead girl; flew all the way to Los Angeles on a five hour flight to do that video. And when I got to Los Angeles I found out that I had to drop it like it was hot. And the outfit that they had selected for me, they had to call other girls in on the spot around the local L.A. area to come and take that spot because I will never stand in front of the screen and degrade myself like that. I’ve been cast on hundreds of videos, and I’ve probably turned down out of 100, 95 of them.
DX: Because of that reason?
AWS: Because of that reason. I’m not going to agree with something and turn around and bad talk it; that’s just not what I would do. That would kind of take away everything I’m trying to speak on in this book.
At the end of the day, the entertainment industry is very submissive. Everybody tries to cater to the entertainment industry. I try to avoid the blogs, I try to avoid a lot of what’s being said about me on the internet, but there’s one thing that really caught my attention the other day. Somebody said – and I couldn’t believe that a female spoke out and said that – “he should have beat that hoe, he should have beat her to a pulp, that’s what you get Mos Def for marrying a stripper-hoe.” Where is the justification in that? Where is the logic in that? And where is your dignity and your self-respect for saying something like that? You’re still a woman and you’re saying that based on the fact that Mos Def hit me so it’s okay. Again, I don’t want to get the message out that he’s a wife-beater, that he’s an abuser, or anything; but again, I don’t care if you’re Mos Def, I don’t care who you are. If you’re feeding me, clothing me, you’re doing whatever, that does not give you the right to disrespect me or treat me any less than who I am as a person.
DX: Is Mos the type of person his fans think he is?
AWS: I have to agree with that. That’s specifically why I said “yes” to Mos. And I’ve had four proposals from men way more well off than Mos. I said “yes” to Mos because his personality, his humbleness – he’s not a flashy guy – his love for his children, for everybody around him; he is very sincere. He is a commodity in his community. I loved everything he stood for as a man, not as Mos Def, but as an individual. And a lot of people are saying, “Why yes to Mos and why no to someone who makes 32 million a year?” Because it was not about the money. If that was the case, I would just be single right now.
