It’s been nearly 10 years since we were first introduced to Amber Rose as the model girlfriend of Kanye West and she is now revealing that the relationship served as a crash course in fame.
Speaking to hosts N.O.R.E. and DJ EFN while visiting Drink Champs, Rose explained that nobody taught her how to deal with being the center of attention when it came to paparazzi and press, and that she had to learn fast when she got involved with West.
“When I started dating homeboy, I genuinely cared for him. It wasn’t anything malicious,” Rose said. “I wasn’t using him or anything like that. But in my head, I’m like, ‘I’m not going to be famous.’ I didn’t even think about fame, like, it was not in my head. And then, you know, I would be out with him and they would take pictures of us and I’m like, okay….I was like, ‘This isn’t my life, this is his life, but I’m with him, so I guess it just comes with it, whatever, it’s weird, people are always in our face.’ All of a sudden, I would start going out by myself and paparazzi would follow me when I was not with him….I would go back home and be like, ‘Why is the paparazzi following me? Like, I’m not the famous one here.’”
Watch the full episode below.
“And so, it was just, like, weird to me. And I’m, like, this is just weird. And then all my friends would call me from Philly and be like, ‘Well, we heard this and we heard that about you’ and I’m like, ‘Well, you know me, that’s not true. That’s not who I am.’…I’m all over the internet now and I’m just like, ‘I didn’t ask for this shit.’ I just actually cared about someone that was, one, eight years older than me, and famous. Nobody warned me. No one told me what it was gonna be like. No one said, ‘Hey, if you’re with me and you get photographed, this is what fame is like.’ No one gave me that option. It just happened for me.”
Rose says it was a lot to take in initially. She was and still is a regular chick from Philly who didn’t grow up with money and being introduced to this new world of glitz and glamor and notoriety was a culture shock.
“It was equivalent to having money and being poor the next day,” Rose said in an interesting comparison. “That’s the only way I can say it. Because poor people are like, ‘Well, bitch, you’re rich. He’s giving you money and you’re living the life.’ It’s a culture shock for somebody like me. I was [dancing] at [strip club] Sue’s Rendezvous a week before I was all over the internet. All of a sudden, I was in Paris and London, really expensive clothes. People don’t realize I was only 24 years old and he was 32. I was very immature. I didn’t get [needing] stylists and a publicist. I was like, ‘I do, say what the fuck I want.’”
Obviously, Rose has adapted. She’s become a financial magnet, running several lucrative businesses and a social media maven with millions of fans and followers. She knows how to manipulate the spotlight to her advantage. However, she did tell the Drink Champs family that she went through an especially dark period when she broke up with her music legend lover.
Besides Kanye, she discusses her relationship with ex-husband Wiz Khalifa, her annual “Slut Walk” gathering, and the how her buzz cut became iconic.