As American Songwriter reported several months ago, musician Ray J broke his silence and talked about his now-infamous encounter with model, TV star, and businesswoman Kim Kardashian.
But when they first got together, so to speak, Kim wasn’t well known at all. In fact, she was aspiring to become a celebrity, like her then-friend Paris Hilton.
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How to do that? Well, it seems the strategy was to engage in creating a sex tape with Ray J.
Kim, of course, is the daughter of the late former lawyer, Robert Kardashian, who famously was on the defense team for defamed football star OJ Simpson.
Ray J is cousins with the acclaimed singer Brandy.
Now, Ray J is continuing to speak his mind. The musician recently took to social media to talk about his estranged relationship with the Kardashian family, who he says still owes him for helping to make Kim famous through explicit actions.
Ray J said there are more sex tapes than were revealed and, further, somewhat disturbingly, he claims Kim’s mother watched the multiple sex tapes, choosing which one to “leak.”
“Kim Kardashian got her handwriting and her fingerprints all over my contract,” said Ray J on social media recently. See the whole post here (warning NSFW):
The news comes as Kim is hearing anger from another former love, her now-ex-husband, rapper and producer Kanye West, who has been speaking out against Kim for myriad reasons, most of them having to do with their children, who West says Kim won’t let him see as often as he wants, and her most recent relationship with now-ex-boyfriend, comedian Pete Davidson.
What a mess.
The original story about the Ray J and Kim sex tape, which dates back now almost two decades, was that the tape was leaked. But more recently, Ray J told the DailyMail that it was the Kardashian clan who did it.
Speaking to the outlet, Ray J said he never possessed a copy of the original tape—or any subsequent tapes, which he suggests she still has. And he surely never leaked anything.
He also says he never did any of the things Kardashian claims he did in her new Hulu show. He said in fact, he’s felt outraged by her suggestions that he might have a video of him sodomizing her.
According to a text message shared in the DailyMail story, Kim said, “If you’re upset about the dildo comment it was clearly a sarcastic joke and I was laughing when I said it.”
Said Ray J in the interview, “I have never leaked a sex tape in my life. It’s always been a deal and a partnership between Kris Jenner and Kim and me and we’ve always been partners since the beginning of this thing.”
Added Ray J (born Ray Norwood), “I’ve sat in the shadows for over 14 years allowing the Kardashians to use my name, to abuse my name, make billions of dollars over a decade-and-a-half talking about a topic I’ve never really spoken about.”
Ray J and Kardashian got together in 2002 when they were both 21. They made the now-infamous sex tape, which strangely and calculatedly made Kardashian an internet star and celebrity during her birthday that year. It was released in 2007.
Ray J says that it was his idea to initially put out the video and he suggested it to Kardashian after he saw the response to Paris Hilton’s tape with poker player Rick Salomon, which came out before theirs. Ray J says Kardashian enlisted her mother, Kris Jenner, who released the tape via Vivid Entertainment.
According to the DailyMail, there allegedly was also a contract signed by Ray J and Kardashian for three videos, including two sex tapes: one made at the Esperanza Hotel in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, and another made in Santa Barbara. And a third tape that is listed as an intro to the Cabo video. But in the end, only one tape, the one shot in Cabo, was ever released. Ray J says the rest are kept by Kim “in a shoebox under her bed.”
He says, “She kept them all—she had to go find that tape [Sex Tape Cabo No. 1] and then present it. I never had a tape in my possession in our whole relationship.
“I never had a single one at my house—she had them at her house. She’s always had all the tapes in a Nike shoebox under her bed.
“I’m sure she has bigger beds now and better boxes. That’s how it all came about. Once I pitched the idea to her, just playing around a little bit, that’s when she jumped on the idea, talked to her mom and it was out of my hands from there.”
Today, Ray J says he regrets his role in the releases, ever since he was publicly blamed for leaking the original. He adds that he was never able to correct the falsehoods due to the contract he signed (without legal advice).
He says, “I felt suicidal because when you know something’s real and it’s true and you’re watching a whole family create an empire from a lie they’ve created, it’s heartbreaking and disrespectful to all the entertainers who have been honest and true to their craft.
“As a black man living and working in America, it’s hard to get up every day and look out at the water or look at my family and know that they think something about you when you know it’s 1,000 percent the other way. How do you live like that?
“I couldn’t be a part of any reputable major network television show and do Dancing with the Stars, and do America’s Got Talent or anything like that because of my image.
“Because of what they made me, I’m not allowed to be in those places.”
He continued, “For me, I’ve been walking on eggshells thinking I’m going to get in trouble for telling the truth and I’ve been holding onto it for the past 14 years and watching them humiliate me. They’re celebrating my destruction.”
He said he’s now ready to leave the lie and wants the truth to come out.
He explained, “How do you believe that Ray J is the enemy of all enemies when we’ve been partners from the beginning of the sex tape being released up until now? We’re all still making money.
“But yet you go with defame me and blame me over and over and I can’t do nothing but defend my honor and speak out and tell the truth.”
The last straw for the singer came when the family made it a storyline for their new Hulu show. Ray J even met with Kardashian’s former husband, Kanye West, to talk about everything.
Of that meeting, during which Ray J showed West all the evidence of their interactions, Ray J said, “I was proving to him, I’ve never been the enemy. I’ve never been the person who they say I am. If that was the case, why are you guys trying to brainstorm, come up with ideas with me and make me do what you guys say to do?
“You want me to continue to act the bad guy and you guys have brainwashed me into thinking that’s OK.”
While the DailyMail story continues at length, one of the final points Ray J said in the piece was that, now that he’s a father, he wants the record to come clean. “Now that I’m a father,” he says, “it kills my soul to think my daughter would have to go through life thinking her dad was something that he wasn’t.”
He added, “I will not let them do this to me anymore.”
Read the full story HERE.
Photo by Kevin Mazur/2021 MTV Movie and TV Awards/Getty Images for MTV/ViacomCBS)