Is SuperHead really SuperSmart?

Karrine Steffans McCrary is known as Super Head.


Like duh, this is because word on the street is that she gives really good head, super head.

I am intrigued by this woman because she has managed to build a solid reputation on the ability to master a skill that we have all had from the womb. I am even more amazed that she has managed to build an entire empire and industry around it. Karrine calls herself a Video Vixen, because she has starred in many a two dollar-a-ho videos replete with women with long weaves, mammoth breasts and Hottentot asses, but we all know that is only the politically correct name for being the mistress/side piece of greasy industry executives and rappers on crack. I have always been fascinated by Karrine because I want to know how is it that a woman from admittedly modest beginnings in small St Thomas, US Virgin Islands, who is cute but not the prettiest woman in the world by far, has reinvented herself to become a thrice time New York Times best seller, bona fide actor, life coach and mentor, with an appearance on Oprah to boot. Is her milkshake that good? Whatever Karrine Steffans has between her legs, I want her to tell me the secret (sorry, sell me the secret, chicks like Karrine will give you nothing for free) because although it is very easy to be a trick, it is not easy to be a multimillionaire trick.

Karrine, in her interviews, does not come across as the 21 year old chickenhead that the media loves to portray- she is not the caricature of the celebrity hopping single mom (“where the party at?”), high on false promises and lies, consumed by crack and alcohol and riddled with debt. In interviews and press releases she is always erudite, introspective, confident and self assured (almost cocky), with a “so what” attitude that keeps me inwardly rooting for her. After all, she has completed the biggest trading coup of all- making money of a merely repackaged asset. She is the archetypal example of a subprime product- sold as a solid repackaged investment, but digging deep, you find out it is just ordinary debt. But men just don’t seem to care, or to give a shit.

In my opinion, Kareen’s career can be seen as an instructive case in solid business planning and projections. Like a car salesman, Kareen peddled the goods in Confessions of a Video Vixen, dishing the dirt and capitalising on our innate inquisitiveness by selling us the salacious stories of her sex lives with the blacktocracy. However she savvily chose which bed partners she wished to reveal in her first book- Usher, Xhibit, Diddy, Vin Diesel, Jah Rule, Shaquille O’Neal, Jay Z- and chose to leave those out who she thought would still be amenable to giving her a leg up later on in life. A ruthless efficiency calculation. Spread betting. With mafiosa style honour, she protects the identity of her benefactor- Papa. She delivers a sizzling product that is filled with just enough juice to purchase but leaving out just enough detail to create a sweetener that would leave us reaching for our purses the next time round. There were no secrets. She was the precursor to the Kim Kardashians of this era. Her forthrightness and honesty were based on the old adage – there was nothing called bad publicity. She was happy to be dragged on to the Tyra show (who accused her of being a two-bit whore- "you too" she retorted), to confront Bill O’Reilly on FOX and to appear on MSNBC to defend her decisions and her lifestyle. By then we were hooked. Her book debuted at Number 7 on the New York Times best seller list and peaked at Number 5. It remained there for twenty three weeks.

Like a Madoff Ponzi scheme, Karrine realised that she needed an encore to keep the paying consumers paying. She needed a change of tack, a new spin on her product. She debuted the second instalment of her “novel” this time dishing as little dirt as possible on her supposed suitors- Eric Benet, Jamie Foxx and Eddie Murphy; the book reads instead as an attempt to assuage the reader’s sensitive side, as it explains away her supposed love towards Bill Maher. We fell for it- clap and trap. The Vixen Diaries debuted and remained at number six on the New York Times bestseller list for over twenty weeks. Meanwhile, Karrine was busy. Gone were the overtly sexy pictures and images, these were replaced by standard black and white photos and she became Ms McCrary (married to Eddie Winslow to you and me)- lecturer and panellist at the Essence Music Festival, feature speaker in the Sexuality and Gender Week at the University of South Carolina, and celebrity author at the Harlem Book Fair. She now lives in a mansion in LA and her son is attending one of the best private schools in California. She has done the usual lad’s mags (FHM, XXL and Playboy) but she has also been featured in Marie Claire (Australia) and British Elle.

The media, especially the male dominated print and television media tend to wish to paint women as Ms McCrarey as sluts. In fact, her appearance on The FoxxHole- Jamie Foxx’s show was riddled with puerile jokes and comments about fellatio, condoms and oral sex. How ironic, when these are the very same men who facilitate the stories and the tell-alls. These are her enablers because they can never keep their nuts bolted. Without men who were tempted by cheap one night stands, Karrine Steffans would have no story. I do not say this to say that I endorse Kareen’s “tricks” as a valid profession but I do endorse the way in which she has switched it around for herself and has managed to create a livelihood and a business structure out of her experiences.

 I, and most of my friends who went to good universities, are still struggling. We get paid decent salaries, but surely not enough to afford to wear Fendi, Gucci and Prada (I ain’t gonna front) and we still cannot afford to buy apartments or houses in Chelsea or Notting Hill. We sometimes bring our sandwiches to work and eschew the work canteen on grounds that it is too expensive. We treat ourselves to lunch at Carluccios, not The Ivy. We often work 10 hour days and some weekends. We promise ourselves that we are going to write that book and get on the New York Times bestseller list someday. Someday, we will party with celebrities on a yacht in St Tropez or hang with Clooney on Lake Como.

I don’t know about my friends, but when I see that I have my firm’s print room, and not a publishing agent on speed dial, I know that I am serious when I say I am off to buy Karrine’s next book as she just might have something to teach me.