Kat Stacks, Hate Me Now [Magazine Feature]

Story appears in the September 2010 issue of XXL. On stands now.

Celebrities’ sexual exploits have always fueled the rumor mill. In hip-hop, sometimes those who have had some steamy one-on-one interactions with rappers become minor celebs themselves. Most notable has been Karrine “Superhead” Steffans, a former model turned hip-hop ubergroupie who proudly boasted of her trysts with some of hip-hop’s biggest stars (Ja Rule, DMX, Diddy, Dr. Dre) in her 2005 New York Times best seller, Confessions of a Video Vixen. Another well-known lady friend to hip-hop’s elite, Carmen Bryan, the mother of Nas’s daughter, released her memoir, It’s No Secret, in 2006, which chronicled her relationships with the Queensbridge MC and his onetime rap rival Jay-Z (and Allen Iverson). Several popular Eye Candies have also come and gone over the years.

Enter Kat Stacks, groupie du jour. This past spring, the half- Venezuelan/half-Trinidadian ex-stripper began writing scandalous blogs and making a series of homemade confessional videos, which she posted on her personal website. In them she bragged about rappers she had allegedly slept with (Lil Wayne and members of the Young Money crew, plus Nelly, Fabolous, Bow Wow, etc.), dissed some of their skills in the sack and gave out a few cell-phone numbers. Leveraging the power of the Web with her low-budget videos, plus her Twitter account (@ihatekatstacks)—which, at press time, had almost 70,000 followers—Kat has become an Internet hip-hop star.

Born in Venezuela in 1989, as Andrea Herrera, Stacks moved to Miami with her mom when she was 10, but was raised mostly by her uncles. At 14, Kat fled to Brooklyn with her boyfriend and eventual father of her son. Stacks soon began dancing in underground strip clubs, and over the years worked at spots in both New York and Miami. But her recent celebrity isn’t attributed to her pole skills. It’s Kat’s confrontational videos and nearly constant tweeting—through which she gets into many of her battles with former bedmates and haters—that have garnered her 15 minutes of fame.

In late May, things soured for Stacks, when a Web clip surfaced showing Kat getting physically attacked at a bar. After one man slapped her in the face and pulled her off a stool by her hair, the cameraman demanded Kat “say sorry to Fab” and “say sorry to Bow Wow” (both rappers have denied having any connection to the incident).

Another video emerged in June, in which Kat is physically attacked by a group led by on-again, off-again bodyguard Yung Mazi. In it, three women, including one who is allegedly the aunt of Lil Twist (of Young Money), smacked Stacks in the head, pulled her around by her hair, then instructed her to “tell all them niggas you sorry you fucked with them. Name them, hoe, name them. Who all you done fucked with, name ’em. Apologize to all ’em niggas… Tell the folks how you lied...” A disheveled Kat conceded and agreed she lied. Video over. Up went another clip of a busted-up Stacks denying she lied and dropping a few more phone numbers.

Since her emergence, the controversial Stacks has proven to be, at least for the moment, an inescapable figure in rap. XXL caught up with the vixen to find out exactly who she is and how she got so popular. It’s Kat Stacks, bitch!

Your relationships with men are at the root of your popularity. So what’s the relationship with your father?

My daddy died when I was, like, 10 months old. I was actually raised by my uncles… I never had a father figure, because my mom was running around with a lot of muthafuckas. And my uncles weren’t father figures, either. They used to be physically abused by their father, so that’s how I was raised. I got tired of it. I left. I ain’t never had a father figure. I never had that mother figure. Ain’t none of them were ever there.

So you were abused growing up?

I was not sexually abused. I was just physically abused. I was raised with punches. All I know is violence.

When did you start attracting rappers?

When I first started [stripping], I didn’t expect to meet anybody. I just thought about money to pay my bills. The first person I met was Pitbull… The next person I met was T-Pain, because he owned the club Encore, and I was working there. I started meeting them out [in Miami]. And then I started meeting more on Twitter. I didn’t expect to meet none of these muthafuckas on Twitter, because you think it’s only computer nerds on there, but [rappers] are actually on there.

You claim to have slept with many rappers, but some, like Nelly, Bow Wow and Fabolous, deny it.

Of course a rapper is gonna say they never met me. Of course they gonna be like, “I don’t know this bitch.” But, at this point, I got text messages, I got everything on these muthafuckas.

Was there ever money exchanged? Was it a prostitution thing?

Well, since I was a stripper, back then it was all about money. So if anybody wanted me to go home with them, they had to pay. So yeah… I don’t have to fuck dudes for money no more. They just give me money to see my face.

You’ve been assaulted on video. Are you afraid for your safety?

The first time I got ridden up on…I had no manager, I had no security. I put that on myself. The second video, I [had management], but I went against [management], and I sneaked out and met up with these people. I put myself in this situation. If I was to just cool out, sit in my room and not went nowhere and got wild, none of this would’ve happened. But it ain’t gon’ happen again. They ain’t gon’ catch me slippin’.

Do you regret anything?

When I first made the Internet blog, I regretted it, because everybody stopped talking to me. But as I got bigger in time, bigger names and muthafuckas in the game, they all started getting at me. It just upgraded my career. Now I don’t gotta go work. I don’t gotta do shit. All I gotta do is show up at a [club] and get paid [for appearances]. I don’t regret it anymore. The first time I did it, I was like, “Damn, why the fuck
I did this shit? Because I was drunk? Just to embarrass muthafuckas?” I didn’t expect to get money out of it. Now these muthafuckas keep fuckin’ with me, so I’m gonna continue to do Kat Stacks. —Rob Markman