At the time, Amber was living in a housing project in The Bronx and supporting herself as a stripper, working the pole at Sue’s Rendezvous in Mount Vernon, in Westchester.
Her first reaction to running her hand over her bald scalp was deep regret.
“After I shaved, it I cried for a few days, until I realized it looked dope,” she recalled. “Sinead O’Connor was a bald-headed bad-ass, and I loved her.”
Amber Rose with current boyfriend, rap star Wiz Khalifa, who is helping her break into music.
Reuters
“After I shaved [my hair for the first time],” Amber Rose says, “I cried for a few days until I realized it looked dope. Sinead O’Connor was a bald-headed badass and I loved her.” That impulsive buzz cut made her a star, and today, Rose, 28, shaves her head twice a week
It was that impulsive teenage buzz cut that would make her a star.
Today, 28-year-old Amber shaves her head twice a week to maintain her signature look. “I don’t even know how girls deal with hair,” she said.
You might not know her by name, but you’ve probably caught a glimpse of her face. She’s plastered on Times Square billboards, as the current face of Smirnoff Vodka. She’s been shot by world-famous fashion photographers and posed as a nude model in a Louis Vuitton sneaker campaign.
She’s appeared in rap videos and rakes in tens of thousands of dollars in cash a night to attend parties at nightclubs.
Over the past three years, Amber has risen from obscurity to infamy, stalked by the paparazzi on the arms of some of the world’s biggest rap stars — and not afraid to stir up trouble with her female rivals.
“I’ve had two men in the music industry who loved me to death — and I have a bald head,” Amber explains of why she’s a controversial hot rod in the hip-hop world. “Well, one man that loves me to death, and the other that loved me halfway.”
In 2008, rapper Kanye West became obsessed with Amber’s unique look after seeing her dancing in the Ludacris “What Them Girls Like” video. Amber, whose father is Irish and whose mother is from Cape Verde, stood out in a sea of video vixens.
“I was home in The Bronx, and he called me on my cellphone,” she recalled. “I’d never met him before. He was like, ‘Hey, it’s Kanye.”
She promptly hung up on him, mistaking the famous rapper for a prank caller.
Kanye called back and finally convinced her he was serious about flying her to LA to star in his Robocop video.
The video was never released, but Amber and Kanye struck up a friendship and he invited her to the Grammys.
“We weren’t dating yet,” said Amber. “ We were still just friends, and we had never kissed or anything. I was in the back with his family. I didn’t sit in the audience. We didn’t do the red carpet or anything like that.”
“I had never had Chanel before,” she cooed over the bodysuit he bought her for the occasion. “I’d never had anyone go out and buy me a really expensive outfit. When I told him I was an [exotic] dancer, he was like, ‘I don’t care if you’re a crackhead. I don’t care if you’re a prostitute. I just want to be with you.’ That’s what made me love him.”
For two years, she was on his arm, front row at Fashion Week or strutting the red carpet at the Video Music Awards, when Kanye famously interrupted Taylor Swift’s acceptance speech to announce that “Beyonce had the greatest video of all time.”
Amber Rose with current boyfriend, rap star Wiz Khalifa, who is helping her break into music.
Reuters
“After I shaved [my hair for the first time],” Amber Rose says, “I cried for a few days until I realized it looked dope. Sinead O’Connor was a bald-headed badass and I loved her.” That impulsive buzz cut made her a star, and today, Rose, 28, shaves her head twice a week
Amber was taken into hip-hop’s inner circle. She flew to Paris with Jay-Z and Beyoncé, who taught her the trick of sleeping in a full face of makeup, she says. She was signed to Ford Models and became as famous for her big booty as her bald head after sexy shoots for fashion and men’s magazines.
But now, Amber admits she was unhappy in her high-profile relationship. Earlier this month, she blamed her 2010 break-up on reality television star Kim Kardashian, whom she called a “home-wrecker” for having an affair with Kanye.
But she also blames him.
“He is your typical rapper in the industry,” Amber told The Post over dinner at The Lion, a celebrity hot spot in the West Village. “He can’t be faithful, and it’s not just with one person. He’s just unfaithful with a lot of different women. I got to the point where I thought, my heart can’t take it anymore. I don’t deserve this. I don’t care when people say that I owe him my life because I’m famous now. I don’t owe him nothing.”
Today, she lives in LA with current squeeze, rapper Wiz Khalifa, the 24-year-old who shot to mainstream fame with his ode to Pittsburgh, “Black and Yellow” last year.
After the Kanye breakup, Amber “totally separated myself from hip hop,” she said. “I didn’t listen to the radio, I just totally got out of the world. I listened to heavy metal.”
But she was single for only a few months before she met Wiz Khalifa via Twitter.
“I was scared, because he’s four years younger than me, and he’s in the same industry as Kanye and I was so over all that,” said Amber. “All odds were against him, but I couldn’t fight the feeling. Wiz is the better man.”
The couple has been dating for a year — they have each other’s names tattooed on their hands — and Amber said they’re thinking about marriage, babies, and buying a home together.
“We both travel a lot, so when we do see each other, we lay up in the bed, get sticky with each other, and watch movies,” said Amber. “If Wiz felt insecure about me dating Kanye, I wouldn’t be with him today. Everyone is someone’s sloppy seconds, unless you’re a virgin.”
Amber admits that her jetset life can sometimes feel surreal.
“Like every poor person, I used to dream about winning the lottery,” said Amber, who estimated she’s worth millions today. “I didn’t just get money, though. I got fame. And I got fame before I got money, and it was scary. It f---ing sucks.”
Amber’s Bronx housing project was a step up from her childhood in Philadelphia, where she says that she and her mother were homeless when she was a young teen.
Her father, who served in the military for 20 years, divorced her mother when she was young, and she started stripping on the sly when she was 15, under the pseudonym “Paris.”
“I was already developed,” she said. “I looked like a young 18-year-old.”
Her rise to the limelight over the past three years is the inspiration for her debut single, released earlier this month, titled “Fame.”
She’s currently recording the rest of the album, which she hopes will make her more famous and rich, at Jungle studios in Manhattan.
Now that the money is also rolling in, it makes the constant attention easier to deal with.
Amber peels off four $100 bills from a thick wad of cash she carries in her pocket and throws it casually on the dinner table.
“Let’s go,” she says, scooting out of the leather booth like she was born in one. She’s ready to strut out the door at dinner, where a cameraman from TMZ waits for her outside.
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