VIBE June/July 2011 Cover Story: Amber Rose

AMBER ROSE'S

LIFE DOESN'T SUCK

YEEZY TAUGHT HER WELL. FOR THAT SHE IS GRATEFUL. BUT CAN HER BRAND—FORMERLY CURATED BY MR. WEST—STAND ON ITS OWN?

Words: TRACY GARRAUD l Photography: EMILY SHUR l Make-Up: MIKKI BEY l Styling: NIKI SCHWAN

ON A RECENT MONDAY MORNING, Amber Rose, the 27-year-old girlfriend of rapper Wiz Khalifa, ex-girlfriend to Kanye West and heroine to more than 500,000 Twitter followers, walks out of a midtown Manhattan Holiday Inn, heading for a massage at the Mandarin Oriental. She wears a black Moschino leather jacket decorated with giant gold buttons in the shape of lions, tights, dark Vintage Ultra sunglasses and Yves Saint Laurent pumps. She has plump lips and breathtaking curves. Her entourage consists of an assistant and a “brand manager.” She is all set, except for one small thing: She hates massages.

 During the short drive uptown, Rose keeps the small talk to a minimum. Her mind is elsewhere. She has a business meeting in 40 minutes and would rather not get the massage. In fact, she insists that we conduct this interview in the hotel lobby. After some prodding, a compromise is reached: The interview can take place in the suite, but the manager and assistant must accompany us. 

Rose takes a seat in a canopy lounge bed surrounded with pillows. “I don’t really mind interviews,” she says, adjusting her shades. “But I’m still getting used to them.” Her manager and assistant take pic- tures of themselves on the massage table. They will later post them on Twitter.

Rose talks about everything from the inspiration for shaving her head (“As a little girl, I always wanted Sinead O’Connor’s haircut in the video [for] “Nothing Compares 2 U”) to her superstar ex-boyfriend. The conversation turns, however, after the reporter mentions that like Amber Rose, she too is a proud bisexual. They talk about their shared crush on Disney’s Princess Jasmine, but then Rose’s manager chimes in: “I don’t want any girlfriend talk. She’s in a relationship with a man right now, so can we talk about that?”

“We can talk about it,” Rose says. “It just has to be written very tastefully because when people think of bisexuals they think of nasty, freaky girls that have threesomes all day.”

Time is up. When Rose departs for her meeting, her manager asks if she could borrow VIBE’s Town Car.

A call to arrange another interview with Rose, results in her manager quickly hanging up.

Later that afternoon, a VIBE editor contacts Rose’s manager. The manager is concerned about some of the people contacted for secondary interviews. She also suspects that the reporter is trying to have sex with her client. Rose, her manager says, isn’t comfortable talking to the reporter again, so VIBE agrees to let another contributor conduct the follow-up interview with Rose.

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