The author of Confessions of a Video Vixen, which first exposed the bad behavior of numerous hip-hop stars when it was published nearly two decades ago, says that she was “gifted” to Diddy in February 2001, fresh off his split with Jennifer Lopez, after a day of “popping pills” and drinking with music execs around Los Angeles in a limousine.
“In retrospect, I realized that I was given to him as a gift by another executive,” says Elisabeth Ovesen, 46, in an interview with the Daily Beast. “Diddy’s car pulled up” as they were leaving a club around 3 a.m., she remembered, “He asked who I was, and the men spoke for me.”
Those “men,” Ovesen alleged in her 2005 Vixen memoir were Murder Inc Record’s boss Irv Gotti and flagship artist Ja Rule. It was the height of hip-hop’s opulence, when music video budgets ballooned and had auteur-level creative direction—and appearing in such productions could make someone a star. A 21-year-old Ovesen, then known as Karrine Steffans, had appeared in Jay-Z’s music video for his 2000 hit song “Hey Papi,” which reportedly cost at $1 million to make.
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Diddy, then known as “Puff Daddy,” was “at the forefront of the million-dollar look,” Ovesen remembers, and she knew meeting him at that club was an opportunity. “He was like, ‘Send her to my house,’” she says. “And that was it. I got the order to go to his house, and that was the first time he and I spent time.”
Ovesen knew what was expected of her when she showed up to Diddy’s house, and she went in “eyes open” planning to write about a world where “nearly everything goes.”
“I was not one of his victims,” Ovesen told the Daily Beast. “And his victims deserve the space and time to discuss what happened in those rooms.” Ovesen toed a line between visitor and voyeur in a 2006 Oprah interview titled, “Smart Women on ‘Stupid Girls.’” Ovesen said the platform launched her book to the tops of many bestseller lists.
“No one wanted the book at first,” Ovesen recalled in a 2015 Vlad TV interview. “Mainstream media was like what is this Black girl with her stories with all these Black people.”
Yet the book was an early hit in Black homes and hip-hop circles, the New York Times reported at the time, because Ovesen was one of the first to pulled the curtain back on power, sex and sexuality in hip-hop and entertainment. Now Ovesen is gearing up to launch the 20th anniversary edition of Confessions of a Video Vixen next year.
In the book’s more salacious pages, it is revealed Ovesen had relationships with Jay-Z, DMX, and Diddy. She has also disclosed romantic connections with Vin Diesel, Fred Durst, Bobby Brown, Lil Wayne, Method Man, and Bill Maher, among others. She explained that these were not trysts, the majority of them were relationships that lasted for years.
“Bill and I were together from 2005 to 2007, and are still friends to this day,” Ovesen tells the Daily Beast. “I love that man. As for other connections, I no longer discuss my personal life with the public.”
In telling her story, Ovesen says she hoped to change the conversation around “female sexual autonomy” in a world where women are treated as objects to be used.
