In the early 2000s, Karrine Steffans was one of the most recognizable faces in hip-hop music videos, appearing in Jay-Z’s “Hey Papi,” Mystikal’s “Danger” and Ja Rule’s “Between Me and You.” To some, Steffans appeared to be living her best life, rolling in circles with some of the hottest athletes and artists at the time.
But underneath it all, she was carrying the weight of years of mental, physical and sexual abuse while trying to raise her son, Naim, as a young single mother.
Steffans told her story in “Confessions of a Video Vixen,” her 2005 memoir which chronicled her journey as a young woman from a troubled home in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands to someone who partied with A-listers all over the world.
At the time, Steffans’ book was shocking. She gave readers intimate details about her sexual relationships with the likes of Ice-T, Ja Rule, Ray J, and yes...Diddy. But 20 years later, in a post-#MeToo Movement era when survivors are telling their stories and seeking justice for the abuse they suffered at the hands of larger-than-life entertainment moguls, it hits different.
This week, Steffans released a 20th anniversary edition of her bestselling memoir with a new foreword that is reflective on what she survived and how she’s healed. Steffans doesn’t consider herself a victim, but rather a person who made conscious choices “informed by childhood trauma.”
“Awaiting you are recollections of abuse and the mismanagement of a little girl destined to fail, who stumbled and fell more times than she can recount before blossoming into a woman determined to win,” she writes.
Ahead of the book’s release, Steffans told The Root she didn’t believe the news around Diddy’s legal issues made her book any more important, adding that she wonders why this day of reckoning took so long.
“It has just taken twenty years for this twisted society to question why it exalts men who lie and assaults women who tell the truth,” she said. “I’ve heard people say I was before my time. But, I was not before my time; you were all late to the revolution, and the public’s delayed reaction to recent but repetitious headlines that are as old as time only underscores that fact.”