Mississauga Former Stripper Dishes About Stormy Relationship With Rapper/Actor Mos Def

Source: www.thestar.com - Ashante Infantry, Pop & Jazz Critic

(June 29, 2008) While kiss-and-tell books have been a staple of rock ’n’roll, it’s early days for the genre in hip hop. Bestowed with the industry nickname Superhead, former music video performer and Virgin Islands native Karrine Steffans got the ball rolling in 2005 with her New York Times bestseller Confessions of a Video Vixen which explicitly detailed dalliances with entertainers, such as Sean “Diddy” Combs, Jay-Z and Dr. Dre.

New Yorker Carmen Bryan followed with 2006’s It’s No Secret, which outlined her relationship with her daughter’s father, rapper Nas, whom she two-timed for five years with his rival Jay-Z, and on occasion with basketball star Allan Iverson.

Now a Canadian woman in getting in on the action.

One-time stripper Alana Wyatt-Smith, 29, who has a 7-year-old son with Toronto hip-hop artist Saukrates, has penned Breaking the Code of Silence, a memoir examining her 2005 marriage to American MC-turned-actor-Mos Def, three days after they met, as well as encounters with various professional athletes and celebs.

She also recounts a rough-and-tumble upbringing that included childhood sexual abuse by a relative and being beaten into a coma by a violent boyfriend as a teenager.

Wyatt-Smith would prefer to distance her book from that of Steffans and Bryan, insisting that it’s not an exposé, because she disguises the identities of the bulk of her lovers. (Another key difference is that the Americans’ books were released by reputable publishing houses and consequently don’t suffer the errors in spelling, grammar and coherency that plague her self-published narrative).

“I disagree with putting names of people in there, just out of respect for their wives and children,” said Wyatt-Smith in an interview. “If this was about making money, getting rich, I could have wrote a tell-all book, 10 times better than Karrine Steffens. People want to know about the biggest names in the NBA, who proposed to who, and did what, and this and that; I could have put some stuff in there that would have made it a No. 1 seller within days. I use nicknames, initials, that myself and the gentleman would know; the ones named I got permission from.”

Except, of course, for the biggest fish, Mos Def, legally named Dante Smith. The Star tried unsuccessfully to reach the 34-year-old Brooklyn native for comment through his record label, booking agent and entertainment lawyer.

Highly rated for his socio-political stance and distinctively mumbling flow, Mos Def, who will be in town on the Rock the Bells tour next month, also fronts a hip-hop-jazz big band which played Carnegie Hall last night and is a burgeoning actor who appeared in acclaimed films such as Monster’s Ball and Be Kind Rewind.

In her book, Wyatt-Smith, a Grade 7 dropout who previously supported herself as an exotic dancer, model and video music performer (Snoop Dogg’s “Drop It Like It’s Hot),” recalls their first public outing, two days after they met in Toronto:

“He had asked me if I would attend a MuchMusic performance featuring Kanye West. Now, that was a little awkward because a year prior I had met Kanye in Vegas and we had a moment! NOT SEXUAL! I REPEAT, KANYE WEST and I NEVER have had sexual relations,” she emphasises in the book. She adds: “Much to my surprise, Mos introduced me as his wife.”

The next day, August 17, 2005, the pair were married at Toronto City Hall. In the wedding photos included in the book they look happy and sober.

“There were stories that we may have been on drugs when we go married.....it was true honest love at first sight; although it took me a while to get to know him, and I think it was more in his heart than it was in mine. I kind of went along with it.”

Within six weeks, the couple had attended Fashion Week in New York, the MTV Video Music Awards in Miami, purchased a $850,000 house in Caledon — and separated.

She said she filed for divorce in October following what she claimed was a loud argument that got out of control while they were in Brazil, where Mos Def was filming a movie.

“I don’t believe that his intent was to hurt me, I believe that he was trying to prove a point,” she said. “But I had shared and cried with him many nights about my past (abusive) situation and I asked of him not to do that, because it brings back memories; so I found it to be more disrespectful, because he knew what I had been through.”

Wyatt-Smith said she didn’t press charges because she didn’t “want to cause problems” in the hopes that his outburst was “a first and last.”

She said there were several attempts at reconciliation, but that Mos Def, who has six children with four different women, has a demanding though not abusive demeanour that she found difficult to abide. They have not been together since October 2006, but despite a $115,000 financial settlement are not officially divorced.

“He won’t sign the papers,” she said. “He told my lawyer if he can’t have me, nobody else will.”

On the afternoon the Star visited Wyatt-Smith’s mod Mississauga condo, she’s wearing her wedding rings, but gushing about a current boyfriend who in a few weeks will be history.

“To keep the guys away, honestly,” she demurred on the subject of the flashy diamond. She’s sweet and chatty, but just as contradictory on the subject of her, well, husband: on one hand blaming their incompatibility on her inability to be submissive; on the other expressing a desire to reconcile — “Since Mos, I have yet to experience being loved.”

Toronto-born of Italian and Jamaican parentage, Wyatt-Smith reveals a hard knocks start that found her on her own at 13 and sucked into a fast lifestyle for survival. She said she supports herself now with “odd jobs here and there, hosting,” but is taking a writing course in hope of reinventing herself as an author and journalist. She also fancies herself a motivational speaker with a story she believes is tailor-made for Oprah Winfrey, Tyra Banks and her holy grail — Dr. Phil, despite Internet naysayers who brand her a gold-digger.

“You have the girl out there that’s 35, 36, still carrying around the fact that her uncle molested her when she was 7 years old and hasn’t told nobody. That is a horrible thing to walk around with, I’ve done it.

“Then there’s the woman out there who doesn’t know the difference between `Is he my lover? Is he my pimp?;’ I’ve been there. Or, `I’m dating this NBA player, he flies me to 13 cities straight out of 82 games, I think he’s in love with me, but does he really like me?’ No, I’ve done it. And `Oh, my gosh! I thought he really liked me, we built this huge chemistry up until he came here, then he never called me after we slept together;’ I’ve been there. I saw death; I wound up on a hospital bed for three months because of my first boyfriend.

“If you have a question, I can answer it,” she insists.

“Even sitting around a jail or shelter with abused women, that’s the thrill I’m going to get from this book. I’ve never been a Louis Vuitton shopper type. I’m not fancy, I’m not expensive. In fact, I’ve never owned a Louis Vuitton bag.”