Within the early 2000s, Karrine Steffans was probably the most recognizable faces in hip-hop music movies, showing in Jay-Z’s “Hey Papi,” Mystikal’s “Hazard” and Ja Rule’s “Between Me and You.” To some, Steffans gave the impression to be residing her greatest life, rolling in circles with among the hottest athletes and artists on the time.
However beneath all of it, she was carrying the load of years of psychological, bodily and sexual abuse whereas attempting to boost her son, Naim, as a younger single mom.
Steffans instructed her story in “Confessions of a Video Vixen,” her 2005 memoir which chronicled her journey as a younger lady from a troubled residence in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands to somebody who partied with A-listers everywhere in the world and was identified by the nickname, “Superhead.”
On the time, Steffans’ ebook was stunning. She gave readers intimate particulars about her sexual relationships with the likes of Ice-T, Ja Rule, Ray J, and sure…Diddy. However 20 years later, in a post-#MeToo Motion period when survivors are telling their tales and searching for justice for the abuse they suffered by the hands of larger-than-life leisure moguls, it hits completely different.
This week, Steffans launched a twentieth anniversary version of her bestselling memoir with a brand new foreword that’s reflective on what she survived and the way she’s healed. Steffans doesn’t take into account herself a sufferer, however moderately an individual who made acutely aware decisions “knowledgeable by childhood trauma.”
“Awaiting you’re recollections of abuse and the mismanagement of slightly lady destined to fail, who stumbled and fell extra occasions than she will be able to recount earlier than blossoming into a girl decided to win,” she writes.
Forward of the ebook’s launch, Steffans instructed The Root she didn’t imagine the information round Diddy’s authorized points made her ebook any extra vital, including that she wonders why at the present time of reckoning took so lengthy.
“It has simply taken twenty years for this twisted society to query why it exalts males who lie and assaults girls who inform the reality,” she mentioned. “I’ve heard individuals say I used to be earlier than my time. However, I used to be not earlier than my time; you had been all late to the revolution, and the general public’s delayed response to current however repetitious headlines which are as outdated as time solely underscores that reality.”