CUNT MAFIA NEW WORLD ORDER
Author: Katie Cercone
Photography by Marie Tomanova
KC: Why don’t you tell me where you are from, how you became a Female MC and what your early work was like?
CM: I’m from New York, born and raised. I was once a Long Island Italian Princess. She lived far far away about an hour from NYC and would take the Long Island railroad as she pleased until she could learn how to drive and then she started taking the LIE to the Midtown Tunnel before she learned about the BQE and the Williamsburg Bridge. I would rave, party. I was punk and goth growing up and I never really liked rap until Lil Kim. I was always a fashion girl, a Betsy Johnson girl, you know being a Long Island Princess with mommy shopping. I was obsessed with fashion. The Lunachicks was sort of the first live punk band that incorporated fashion with the streets, you know being pretty-ugly. Courtney Love was definitely an icon mixing fashion in the punk sense. Then Lil Kim came along and just started giving me swag incorporated with the punk. I had already been ghetto punk so by the time I was in my twenties I had been molded into this NYC melting pot of everything that’s cool. I’ve been sitting on myself a little bit in terms of really making music because I’ve just been MC-ing at parties, freestyling over beats, nothing written, nothing memorized. I’m a dancer too so when I’m dancing I can just like talk to the beat. I’m a character, over the top. I’m like crazy so if I just say something with animation it’s like a Nicki Minaj moment where she could be saying this and all of a sudden it’s rapping, you know? You’re just hyper-personifying yourself.
KC: So you would throw parties?
CM: I would throw parties and MC and host on the mic and I just realized I have a knack. I love being on stage. I’m not a social person in terms of like daily things but when it comes to being on stage and performing I turn into a different character. It took me a while to really get the ego and confidence enough to like say fuck everybody. This is what I’m doing, and this is who I am. To really do it my way. Not the standard rapping and the standard girly girl shit. No I got a butch personality. I’m aggressive, I’m Italian, fuck! I just started not giving a fuck, being who I am and getting comfortable with that.
KC: Is that when people really started responding to your work?
CM: Yes, definitely. A lot of people just see me as like “Oh there’s Contessa fighting and arguing again…” Until I got an iPhone a year ago. It literally changed my life because I could be on Twitter non-stop, Facebook non-stop… on the go and also communicating with people through iMessage and blah blah blah. I could do things instantly and join that art world corporate mentality of getting things done quick. I also just started getting more clever with the things I was Twittering about. I adopted the mindset that I can self-promote and I don’t need someone to come in and tell me what to do. I can just become this personality and have people start relating to it and wanting to emulate it. Making women embrace that “fuck you” type mentality.
KC: Are you a feminist?
CM: I’m definitely a feminist. It’s very political but it’s a modern take on Feminism. It’s urban, it’s street. It’s not this like old school way of thinking. I’m not from the art world. I’m from the streets. Women that will respond to me are up on what’s going on in the world right now. It’s not dated, it’s a new world order! General feminism, I just think of like L Word, money, LA, corporate dinners, art world shit… it’s not about that who gives a shit about your designer two-piece suit and your silk tie? It’s also incorporating things that a feminist might not see as so PC because I really like to push the boundaries.
KC: Like your name?
CM: Cunt Mafia came from a mix of things. When I was recently watching old Courtney Love concerts (Even though I saw Courtney Love in concert when I was like eleven in 1994…) I later went and watched on Youtube, a whole show before she got all glamorized by the music industry or you know… sold out… she was literally screaming “Everybody say CUNT! Everybody say N*****!” This is literally why people love Courtney Love. She had to have some balls…she’s just bat shit crazy. At the time, she was out of her mind on drinking, drugs, whatever… there was just something about Courtney Love I really related to. I consider her a feminist even though she never called herself one (to my knowledge). She’s still around, she’s still relevant. She’s a strong female whatever you think about her. I was looking at a young Courtney Love, the things that she was saying to push the boundaries with. Like oh shit I saw the artist in her not what the music industry has made out of her.
KC: What do you think the music industry made out of her?
CM: Obviously a tabloid joke. Every celebrity is a tabloid joke. Everything in the world right now is from the male perspective, even the gay male perspective. It is about making fun of women. The Lindsay Lohans… they only like women when they’re down. When Amanda Bynes was doing Disney movies making millions of dollars no one gave a shit about her she probably only had like 100,000 Twitter fans. Now all of the sudden she’s a mess… It gives you a hint how the gay male perspective infiltrates heterosexual society which infiltrates the tabloids which infiltrates society which infiltrates the mental disorder which Amanda Bynes probably just has and needs help for. But they’re glamorizing it, look Britney Spears shaves her head!! Gay men are running the world right now and it’s about making fun of women when they’re down same thing with Courtney Love. They’re commodifying making women look bad. I’ve had my problems with alcohol and drugs. A few years ago I’d be seen being ratcheter than all of them. Now that I have strength and I’ve become aware of where alcohol and drugs can take me I’m literally on top of my game. You can’t stop me.
KC: What do you mean gay males are running the world? Do you mean the art world?
CM: I mean what we think of in terms of fashion. I don’t see many women designers when we’re talking about fashion. Fashion runs the world. Tabloids are like the old housewife. The gay male is the new housewife. Especially gay white men have expendable income. They fuck men every day, they go to gay cruises, they go to gay clubs. Besides their mother how many women do they have to interact with (on their level)? The male dominance factor must be higher than a straight male at least he’s got to fuck a woman. They’re running the world and they never have to interact with a woman if they don’t want to.
KC: What about feminism and language. How do you feel about the rampant misogyny in rap? And the profanity? Is it ever okay for a white woman to say the N-word?
CM: When I’m drunk wasted I might have said it with the A at the end but at the end of the day I’m not trying to disrespect nobody. I heard from queer sources Iggy Azalea was saying it on Twitter one day and I heard these queer sources were coming at her, and she even responded like an idiot! You know what I mean? I’m not emulating anything. I’m from New York. I’m not a rapper from Australia fronting she’s from the south. I’m actually representing New York. I’m a New York Italian white female. I’m something that exists like a Marisa Tomei. I’m not a made up fairy fantasy. The way I talk is actually how we talk on the streets. We are the fashion fore-fronters of the street wear my NYC people. The words we make up all start with us. HAM started with us. “I’m Carrying” – that’s House of La Dosha (I credit them with a lot of the words). We created these words and the fashions that are this queer culture right now. Now I use misogyny back at misogyny half the time. Like one of my freestyles goes like “the only dick I wanna suck today is my own dick… what am I gonna do my dick is bigger than yours.” Literally. The shit that these people rap about, think that they’re the fuckin OG lover, the OG Shabba Ranks or some shit! As a dominant strong women…I could probably out-write you, out-dress you out-freestyle you out-everything you. I’m just saying in a general scope of things, when you realize your power, no one can fuck with you.
KC: How old are you?
CM: I’m old enough. Also my music I would make back then… compared to what I’m talking about now it’s like night and day. I went through hell and back. I’ve been to God and back, you know? There’s going to be a lot of ugly in honesty and if I don’t make it because I’m not willing to sell out? Cool. I just want to be comfortable. I got hit up by a woman who wants to run for senator her second time. She’s like “Everyone wants me to lose weight… blah blah blah… but I look up to you.” She’s like in fucking Kansas or something running for senate talking to me on Facebook about how she looks up to me as a strong women. I have girls who email me “I’m plus size and I wore a crop top today I feel good about myself.” I got gay girls, gay boys… they all want to be my children House of Cunt Mafia because I have this edgy BossBitch attitude. I’ve created stars, people started at my raves who are making money. I’m just like this old wise grandmother. Maybe my claim to life is to guide people, to be an energy field for people. I just don’t want to be an old woman living in a shoe (laughs). Mother in a trap house. You know what I mean?
KC: I’m reading the Female MC as a type of shamanic figure, you know it’s a healing thing even just you making fun of yourself on stage…
CM: It is healing.
KC: Using comedy, being this icon of social-emotional uplift…
CM: I use comedy because there’s a lot of pain. The funniest people are the most depressed people in the world. Every comedian I can think of battled with drugs or problems. You have to make fun of the ugly parts of yourself to show that you are confident in yourself. The first thing people are going to say about me is “oh she’s fat” or “she’s okay.” I have to be like “I’m the big girl, oh the big girl’s on stage now.” I say shit like that because it’s addressing the elephant in the room. If you make people want to laugh with you then… “oh she’s funny… I see her eyes she’s pretty.” The thing is when I’m doing shows in New York, no shade, black men love big girls and no shade urban any size. But what about when I start going to middle America and the audience is 90% white boys? When I’m doing a hip hop show in Brooklyn they fuck with me. They think I’m sexy. I’m a sex symbol to them: Contessa. I’m a big rave thrower I have my name in New York. But when I’m in fuckin I don’t know Idaho with like 30 people in a show on tour or like a motorcycle bar in Missouri and doing metal mixed with rap with like an all black band people are going to be fucking confused, like what the fuck is this?
- Contessa with the rapper Quay Dash © Marie Tomanova
KC: And in a show situation, it’s usually all male rappers and they have a female mc/host/eye candy… is that typical? Do you consider yourself a rapper? Do you want to be up there with like half female rappers?
CM: My parties are “C-UNIT” that’s Cunt Unit, Whorehouse and Cherry Bomb. They’re all female names. It’s a female-free zone all my parties girls can be topless no girl gets harassed. These hetero parties girls be getting harassed because they’re male dominated. Come to a Contessa party it’s going to be heavily gay, heavily female. The straight men come because they want to be around sexy ladies or they just want to be in a sexy atmosphere. I did a Flatbush Zombie show, I’m the only female MC, the crowd is mostly teenage boys, other zombies and I freestyle and I kill it. But you have to be good. I’m obviously a rapper if I can make a Flatbush zombies crowd bump up and down and go apeshit over a freestyle. I just made it up on the fly. I’m just that type of person. I walk up on stage and I do a little comedy at first. I’m a character, I’m plus size. Then I go onstage and it’s like who is this crazy ass bitch she’s not looking like a slut she’s not dressed like Iggy Azalea or a Miley Virus and she’s not skinny like those dumb bitches and she’s not a fake product. I introduced myself to the people who didn’t know who I was. I’m like “I’m the premier underground,” I’ll be like “fuck the police!” That’s what people want to hear. It’s a rave, it’s a hip hop show. This is the feminist moment, this is the pinnacle of it all: My name is Cunt Mafia, it’s a Flatbush Zombies show and they’re rappin about smoking weed, drugs, saying the n-word constantly, whore, hoe, fuck this bitch you know… every lyric is something like that. Meanwhile the people that throw the show they say “We don’t want her to say the words cunt, whore, or whorehouse.” I’m Cunt Mafia! I was told not to curse, I was not allowed to say my name Cunt Mafia anymore. It’s because it was an all ages show but then tell me why the men can be rapping “I’m putting my dick between her titts.” The strong powerful woman comes on stage “Oh she can’t say cunt, she can’t say whore, she can’t talk about dick, she can’t talk about sex.”
KC: They’re your words to reclaim.
CM: That’s what it is. I was stuck on the summer stage, I be like “apparently I can’t say my name anymore so I’m going to spell it” and I said “C-U-N-T M-A-F-I-A.” So ridiculous. The definition of misogyny, you know? But I still killed it. They can’t hate. It’s not necessarily the crowd, the audience is malleable, people are always looking to learn about something new especially at that age. 14-19 year olds you can change their belief systems. Honestly I get more positive feedback from straight hetero men. They say “I fuck with Cunt Mafia, I want to wear a Cunt Mafia hat.” Women growing up in society feel like they’re saying a dirty word. Men already have the power to say dirty words so a girl might not be so apt to use the word but these dudes are more into it, you know?
KC: Do you feel like, being in the scene a long time, there’s suddenly this mainstream acceptance of queer culture or seeming acceptance? Mykki Blanco is getting all this attention as a “transgender rapper,” what’s happening? Do you feel like it’s being exploited?
CM: I’m more mad about the shade within the community. I don’t care what the world thinks. Obviously we’re all queer and we’re all weird and we just want to make art (money in return). No one is coming for anyone’s look/aesthetic. If we’re all ahead of the curb we’re all going to catch it at the same time, we should all just be positive. In New York it’s a “Bubble” of fame projected. There’s a few people actually making money around the world, Mykki being one of them, but we actually don’t know how many people are at any artists show in Florida; there could be ten people at the show. You’re not going to really twitter about it, but as an artist you’re grateful to just be doin’ you.
KC: The internet is a big smoke screen.
CM: These festivals in Europe those thirty-thousand people that you’re instagramming at your concert are not just there for you and you’re probably on the side stage and it’s a three-day festival. Those 100,000 people are there for the festival not there for you. It is a smoke screen. People are eating off of it and I want to be eating off of it too. It’s the Record Industry. There’s a lot of things I need to learn though in terms of like stage performing. I’m a big girl, I got to figure out how I’m going to dance around the stage, I got to get my Beth Ditto on, you know? You got to crawl before you can walk and some people are walking before they even get to their crawl. A lot of us online are just showing off to our New York friends, I’m this, I’m that… but the queer identity is getting muddled. I mean the artists in New York I highly respect. We’re all fashionable. We all get it, we’re all ahead of the time in sound. I don’t know what a person in middle America looks at Mykki Blanco and thinks; I don’t know what they’re going to think when they look at me. In Europe they get it more, but Europe’s a little dated. They’re still stuck on like a drag queen cigarette bar. They’re not really understanding what an American New York queer is.
KC: Do you make your beats?
CM: I do not make my beats but I creative direct them all. I’m always in the studio with producers, I tell them what I want, the aesthetic… everything from scratch. I write all my lyrics. I like live instruments, I’d like to collaborate with live instruments. I don’t have money, I don’t have management. The biggest rappers are people that started with a team of people working with them. A$ap Rocky to Theophilus London, they had friends as managers, now they are traveling the world. It’s hard to do fifty things plus than have a day job to pay rent. I don’t sell drugs. Plus I’m trying to not be in the nightlife as much. I just released my song “Reign in Ratchet” working with this grammy award-winning producer Proper Villians. All of the producers I’ve been working with have seen something in me. SSION asked me to be on his new album. It’s just networking. Being a rave promoter and kind of an icon of New York I’ve skipped multiple ladders of having to work with beginner producers.
KC: Do you have any singles out?
CM: I’m working on my EP right now. Think I’m going to call it Cult Classic, because I’m a cult classic. I didn’t realize how long this process takes. It’s crazy to see performing is a lot of energy, mostly just a lot of nerves. I respect people so much more now that I’ve performed because I didn’t know. It was always a dream of mine that I sat on. You know what a lot of it had to do with? My self-esteem… “oh people wouldn’t get me I’m too weird.” Right now it’s okay to be weird. But a lot of people are faking the weird. Now there’s a place for me, back then I thought I had to lose weight…
There hasn’t been a Missy Elliot or a Queen Latifah style person – Ricki Lake type person – in like oh ten years.
KC: Why do you think that is?
CM: Because people are fat phobic in the rap industry and mainstream music. It glorifies beauty so much that it’s suicidal for women. Women are legitimately suicidal for positive male attention. You could be like gorgeous but those girls too are just love starved, food starved…and they’re not doing it for themselves. Puppets of the Industry; the Miley Virus. My friend she can write and sing and she’s helping me with my PR and I’m like “You can make it” and she’s like “I just want to be fat, happy and black,” because she knows that it’s going to be a fucking hell hole if you want to come out with music. She’d rather write the music, stay in the background and be fat. I’d rather stay in the forefront being fat (laughs) and honestly to be plus size you have to be really good. Like the shit that these skinny girls put out is it even audible? Do they even write it? Do they even come up with any of it? Do they style themselves? Do they do anything for themselves?! And they’re traveling the world making money, money!! MONEY!!! I mean you look at them before street wear got really big and they’re fashionably tragic. The internet is useful, you can literally be skinny and pretty, put out shit and get a million views and make money. If you’re going to be plus size you have to be good, because it’s a brutal world out there.
KC: What about sex? Arts and popular culture is so hypersexualized and yet there’s still this squeamishness around sexuality. It feels very polarized – let’s not even talk about Miley Cyrus but you know what I mean? How can we be sex-positive instead of hypersexed?
CM: I think twerking is racist.
KC: Do you ever feel shame when you are doing something hypersexual – how do people respond to your work?
CM: I don’t feel shame. People are used to it by now, that they are just seeing me with my titties out… I just need to get paid for that.
KC: And being objectified? Selling yourself?
CM: I don’t though, I don’t do that. I make sure the secret to my potion is a secret. I don’t look like a basic bitch on stage. I don’t look like sex on stage I am sex. Know what I mean? I’m not a model and I don’t have to look like sex. These girls…they may look sexy but you don’t exude sex. I personally don’t even want to fuck you, you look like you’re going to lay in bed. A lot of my friends are gay men because they exude sexuality. And they are faggots, they are not stereotypically gay men. I may have my titties out but it’s more like vulgar…over the top… There’s a picture of me in the New Yorker with two black boys sucking on my titties at the same time at my show. They’re wearing some Jordans that are hard to find. That’s banjee, sucking my titties in rare jordans? That’s CUNT, that is the definition of cunt. It’s a BossBitch. Not everyone is going to get it or understand it. They’ll look at my name on twitter and be like “who’s this fat bitch with her titties out?” Everyone calls someone fat and ugly that’s the first word they revert to. You know how I fight? I go for actual flaws. You wanna come for me I will read you to filth. So sexuality… I just use it to say “fuck you” but I don’t do it in a pornographic Broke Candy “I’m a slut from LA!!” type way. There’s just doing it because they’re watching people like me do it right and they’re doing it wrong. I used to be riot grrl. I was raised on punk. I grew up on the streets. I know what cunt, dyke and faggot means within the punk rock community. That’s why I have been saying cunt for ten years. I was the first cunt on fucking twitter, had to have been. Now everyone says cunt it’s on Jeremy Scott hats now. It’s not real… you’re not cunt in your cunt hat and your cunt shirt! You don’t use the word cunt you ACT cunt. You ACT sexuality you don’t wear it you don’t look it or embody it. Madonna when she was at her prime she could be wearing a full pinstriped suit with her hair slicked back and that bitch was bad. She created the word pop star and the whole music industry just keeps trying to produce the new Madonna. I’M THE NEW MADONNA AND IT’S A NEW WORLD ORDER. Look at the rap industry look at Tyler the Creator, a weirdo…I’m a variation of that for women. I’m not a stereotypically beautiful woman. No pretty bitch is gonna be the next Madonna.
- © Marie Tomanova
KC: And let’s talk about homophobia in hip hop…
CM: It’s huge
KC: How does that effect your work? You’re in rap and then you’re in the queer ballroom scene – how do the two intermix?
CM: A$ap Rocky took that to his advantage as well… he’s playing the game right.
KC: He’s very effeminate, he’s pretty…
CM: His look is Shane Oliver, that’s his look, that’s the designer of Hood by Air, people don’t know that in middle America. I know that because I live in New York. A$ap dresses like a gay man of New York, that’s what it is. It’s a fact. I’m not coming for anybody, I’m not saying anything negative. It’s fact: the gay boys do it first. People wear kilts now!! Who was doing that? Gays are always two years advanced of fashion.
KC: Do you have shows where the homophobia becomes oppressive?
CM: Always
KC: And how about now and seven years ago when you started out, is it better?
CM: The difference is huge. I mean that’s why I created my parties. This is a first world matter! I see misogyny and homophobia even in our own community, most people don’t see the whole picture. I’m from the streets I see it real. I’m not so PC. I see the person for what they are and what they are trying to do. Just because I have some homophobic friends…I’m in the hip hop world…thing is they’re all probably getting their dick sucked by my gay friend in the bathroom right now. You don’t know what’s really going on. I could tell a trans woman chaser/straight man in the hip hop community in a second. That’s why I started my own parties to be around people that get it. I promote the hip hop community as a whole. There’s going to be a few transgender girls, there’s going to be a few gay men in crop tops and there’s going to be hood dudes looking for pussy, there’s going to be girls looking for dick and there’s going to be girls looking for girls.
KC: How come I haven’t been to these parties? In Bushwick or in the city?
CM: Bushwick. I don’t do the city unless I’m getting paid. I have a lot of my own biases in the queer community. I don’t always feel like I fit in at some times. I’m not a scholar I am the prophet. I don’t watch TV. I don’t watch music videos. I don’t go on Youtube. I don’t look at what other pop stars are doing.
KC: You talked about struggling with drugs and alcohol and also getting out of the nightlife scene. How can we make hip hop accessible outside of after-hours? How do we envision something where it’s not such a trap for the ego, sex, drugs, etc?
CM: You get caught up into it! You start thinking this is Hollywood. You start thinking I’m a star or these people are going to make me into a star. NO. You just see the same girls who think they’re New York socialites. All you guys are doing is drugs until 8 in the morning. Now I throw my parties a lot more sporadically; I go out now and I’m getting paid. I’m working. I’m not partying anymore.
KC: But you have the network… you had to go out to build the network…
CM: In the beginning you have to go out all the time. You have to do that grind. Now that I’m coming out with music I need to start going to these industry invite-only parties and have to act a certain way. Everyone in the industry is doing Adderall or cocaine and I don’t want to do that. I’ve been eating apples. You would not see me eating an apple a year ago you would see me babying a bottle of Georgi vodka. Like legit punching people at my own party. I usually like to fight.
KC: People need to hear it from someone who can tell their story. You’re a spiritual leader but you don’t need to be wearing all white (unless of course your headed to C-UNIT’s “NYC Health & Ratchet Club” dress code white). You can be swearing and talking about how you did this and now you do that.
CM: Once you know your power you can really change the world. I don’t know what a Miley Cyrus video is. I don’t know what twerking is. I’m a better dancer than all those girls. I was the only white bitch in the club ten years ago. I’m pre-racism and pre-modern interracial lifestyle. I was the original one.
KC: Before Madonna?
CM: Well not before Madonna. I mean in the context of being Original and authentic. A dream can make millions and so can a puppet bitch.
KC: Madonna did a lot for taboos around sexuality, race and class. And yet people criticize her, bell hooks called her a “plantation overseer in a slave based economy.” How would you respond to the criticism around “racial mimicry”?
CM: Male rap is making it okay for basic white woman appropriators of black culture to become famous. They are allowing the black community to feel excluded from music’s pop charts. Glorifying idiot bitches and making them albums because the bitch comes from money IS Modern SLAVERY. But imagine black men are all fucking white bitches and I can’t talk about wanting black dick?! Get the fuck out of here. I’m going to talk about how I got Jungle Fever. Like why you allowed to talk about fucking white bitches and I can’t talk about how I’ve only had sex with black men for the past seven years. Or trans boys and black girls.
KC: Well you can but there is this sort of stock criticism around cultural appropriation or for instance accusing you of “accessorizing with Black people…”
CM: GURL! Madonna was in the eighties when she was like 19-20 years old dating Basquiat. That’s a real bitch. Sorry. She wasn’t on MTV making millions of dollars when she was just a weirdo artist with Basquiat, cuddling… having sex with her boyfriend Basquiat get the fuck out of here with that! They were old town New York weirdos. Just cuz she does what she likes? Get the fuck out of here with that. Madonna created the word pop star with Michael Jackson. People are still following the same formula. If you keep doing the same thing expecting new results that’s the definition of insanity. No new Madonna coming out. Lady Gaga is trash her music is trash she doesn’t stand for anything.
KC: You are Italian
CM: I’m in Dazed and Confused Magazine as “Big Blonde Madonna” – they made me look exactly like Madonna, they Photoshopped my chin out! Made me look about twenty pounds thinner but they made me look exactly like Madonna.
KC: Did they ask you first? How did you feel about that?
CM: I loved it, it was great. I mean…there are people out there with vine videos. You see the curves. You see the body. The photographer had already shot me for V Magazine the size issue so you already see where it’s like my whole body. It’s not like he’s ignorant. We used to put “Riot not Diet” in magazines. We used to hang signs from the BQE “Pussy Power” or some shit. No one is doing any of that shit anymore. You tumble a picture of your body “Riot not diet” that’s what you do!!!
KC: Who’s doing that?
CM: Everyone! They’re like “I’m showing my titties! I’m a feminist!” That’s what people are doing. I’m a little next level. I mean people love it. People following me. People live for what I’ve said. I’m changing minds.
KC: It’s current
CM: I already know what my next move is, my next look. I mean like take Versace. My EP has Versace mentions all up and down it and now its all about Versace on the radio and it’s like if I were to just put my EP out now it looks like I’m just following the trend when I’ve been studying Versace for 15 years. I have books on Versace at my house from like middle school. I’m a real fashion cunt. People don’t really take fashion as Art they take it as commerce and trend. It’s so beautiful to me that’s why I have certain designers that I really relate to like McQueen. I see myself doing the same shit McQueen did and then just hang myself and call it a day. Make the money real beautiful a legend. I cry with those same spirits. Gianni Versace… someone come and murder me… some enraged lover! I hope I am someday successful enough someone wants to kill me, it’s so beautiful to me the tragedy of a real artist. Only real artists die like that, that’s how I feel (laughter) I’m crazy!! I just feel like, I just love it. Nothing beats Gianni Versace. It’s just sad to me how it is translated now into some like fake H&M silk print with chains on it. That’s your Versace. That’s America’s Versace is fake silk probably polyester blend chain link print.
KC: But it’s affordable
CM: It shouldn’t be affordable. Art should never be affordable. That’s the degredation of society and commercialism. What’s wrong with a one of a kind $30,000 Alexander McQueen gown, what’s wrong with that? Nothing at all. It should be thirty thousand dollars. It should be one of a kind. It should be in a museum. It should be only worn by specific people that deserve to wear it. The problem is they’re putting basic bitches in this shit now.
