welcome back to the deep dive you know i was
staring at the research pile for today's session
and i realized we have a bit of a problem oh
yeah usually when we look at a celebrity career
there's a trajectory it's a pretty straight line
you have the rise you have the peak maybe the
fall and then you know the redemption it's neat
it's a narrative it makes sense exactly it makes
sense and today is not neat yeah not even close
no today we are looking at a file that looks
like someone took five different Puzzles like
completely different genres and just jam the
pieces together until they somehow fit. We're
talking about a woman who started as a stripper
in South Philadelphia, became the face of high
fashion luxury for Louis Vuitton, wrote a book
on financial literacy, marched in the streets
for feminism, made seven figures a month on OnlyFans,
and then... and this is the plot twist that I
think gave everyone whiplash, ended up on stage
at the 2024 Republican National Convention. It
really is the ultimate test case for this show,
isn't it? You're talking about Amber Rose. And
you're right. If you just look at the headlines,
it looks like chaos. It looks, well, it looks
like hypocrisy. That's the word that keeps popping
up in all the op -eds. Hypocrisy. How does the
slut walk organizer endorse the conservative
ticket? It doesn't compute. Right. And the easy
thing to do, the lazy thing, is to just look
at the buzz cut, the sunglasses, and the paparazzi
photos and think you know the whole story. You
know, oh, she's famous for being famous. But
when you actually dig into the source material,
her biography, her business moves, her own words
from interviews and podcasts, you realize that
looking past the image is the whole point. That
is the mission for this deep dive. It has to
be. We want to unpack the life of Amber Rose
Levanchuk. We're going to trace that line from
the struggles of South Philadelphia all the way
to the stage of the RNC. And I think the aha
moment we're looking for here isn't just about
fame. It's about agency. Agency. Explain that.
Yes. It's about how someone takes a deck of cards
that was just stacked against them and learns
to play the game better than the people who invented
it. It's about someone who realized very, very
early on. That in the economy of attention, you're
either the player or you're the chips. And Amber
Rose decided she was never, ever going to be
the chips. I love that analogy, player or the
chips. So let's see how she learned to play.
We have to start at the very beginning, right?
Before the fame, before the sunglasses. Way before.
We're in South Philadelphia. And South Philly
isn't just a geographical location. It's a specific
vibe, isn't it? It is. It's a character in the
story. We're talking early 80s. She was born
in 1983. And South Philadelphia is this very
distinct, gritty, working class environment.
It's a melting pot for sure. But it can also
be very tribal. And right away, we have to look
at the demographics because they shape her entire
identity. Amber has a very specific multi -ethnic
background. Her father, Michael Levanchuk, is
of Irish and Italian descent. Her mother, Dorothy
Rose, is of Cape Verdean descent. OK, so for
those who might not know, Cape Verde is off the
coast of West Africa, but there's a heavy Portuguese
influence there historically. Correct. So she
grows up with this very specific look. And she
often talks about not fitting into a clear box
racially while she was growing up. I can imagine.
Yeah, she wasn't black enough for some, not white
enough for others. She was sort of in this ambiguous
space. But the defining factor of her childhood
wasn't just race. It was economics. OK. The sources
all point to one major turning point early on.
The divorce of her parents. This feels like a
classic catalyst in a lot of these stories. You
know, the fracture in the home. It was a fracture,
but it was also an economic cliff. I mean, her
mother was quite young when she had Amber. She
was only 23 and her father was just 19. Wow.
Kids. Basically kids. And when they split. Her
mother ended up with a stepfather. Wow. And the
descriptions of this period, they're heavy. We
aren't just talking about, you know, a blended
family. The sources describe the stepfather as
an alcoholic. Oh. And suddenly the family's financial
stability just, it evaporated. So they went from
just getting by to pure survival mode. Precisely.
And this is where we see the hustle start. I
think a lot of people have this assumption that
people enter the adult entertainment industry
because they're wild or they're rebellious or
they just want quick cash for luxury items. Right,
for bags and shoes. Yeah, exactly. But for Rose,
the source material makes it crystal clear. This
was about keeping the lights on. It was about
feeding her family. And she started stripping
at age 15. She used the pseudonym Paris. I have
to pause there. 15. 15. That's a sophomore in
high school. I mean, that's a child. It is a
child. But she became a primary provider while
she was still essentially a child. And here's
where we get a glimpse of that player versus
chips mentality. really starting to form. Okay.
There's a really intense detail that came up
in our research from her appearances on podcasts
like The Red Pill and Club Shay Shay. She admitted
that before she fully committed to dancing, she
actually attempted to sell crack cocaine. Whoa.
Okay. That's a heavy admission. It's a startling
admission. But listen to why she stopped. This
is the crucial part. She didn't stop because
a priest told her to. She didn't stop because
she got caught. So what was it? She told the
interviewer she found it too risky. That's fascinating,
because let's be honest, stripping at 15 is incredibly
risky. But in her mind, the drug trade was a
bridge too far. It shows this very pragmatic,
almost cold risk assessment capability. At 15
years old, she looked at the drug trade, the
violence, the prison sentences, the total volatility,
and then she looked at the strip club. And did
the math. And she calculated that the club was
the safer bet to get the money her family needed
to survive. She made a business decision. She
was doing a cost -benefit analysis on her own
survival at age 15. Exactly. And that hustle
muscle, that ability to look at a dangerous or
unstable situation and figure out how to extract
value from it without getting destroyed, that
defines her entire career. When you have to carry
the weight of your family's economic survival
on your shoulders before you can even legally
drive a car, that shapes how you view money and
opportunity forever. It's a different kind of
education. A very different kind. So she's working
under the name Paris, grinding it out in Philadelphia.
But let's be real. There are thousands of women
working in clubs in Philly, New York, Atlanta.
Most of them do not become global icons. Not
even close. So how does she get from South Philly
to being one of the most recognizable faces on
the planet? The Catalyst was a music video. But
to understand why this video worked, we have
to look at the cultural landscape of 2008. Okay,
paint the picture for us. Where were we in 2008?
So in 2008, hip -hop was just dominating the
charts. It was the center of pop culture. And
within that ecosystem, you had this very specific
archetype, the video vixen. That term, it feels
a bit dated now, doesn't it? But it was a legitimate
career path back then. Very much so. It was a
whole industry. You had women like Karrion Stephens
or Melissa Ford who are famous, like truly famous,
strictly for being the it girl in music videos.
But usually the vixen is a prop. Let's be honest.
She's window dressing. She's there to look beautiful,
usually with a very specific aesthetic, long
weaves, big curls, you know, hyper feminine in
a very traditional sense. She's there to make
the rapper look rich and desirable. Right. She's
the accessory. She's part of the set design.
Okay. Amber Rose enters this world in 2008. She
gets cast in the video for Young Jeezy's Put
On, which was a huge song and it featured Kanye
West. But she does something the other girls
weren't doing. She completely disrupts the aesthetic.
The buzz cut. The buzz cut. A bald woman in a
hip -hop video in 2008. That was shocking. Yeah,
it really was. It was aggressive. Yeah, it looked
punk. It didn't fit. And it's hard to overstate
how risky that was, right? If your entire income,
your entire brand depends on your looks and you
shave your head, you are essentially betting
that your face structure is strong enough to
carry the whole brand without the safety net
of traditional hair. It was a massive bet, a
huge gamble, and it paid off spectacularly because
Kanye West, who we know loves to position himself
as an art world disruptor, saw her. And didn't
just see another pretty girl. He saw something
different. He saw a muse. He saw a walking art
piece. And this kicks off what we call the Kanye
era from 2008 to 2010. Now, this is where the
cynics will say, oh, she just dated Kanye. That's
why she's famous. But that just completely ignores
the work she did during that time. She wasn't
just, you know, hiding in his house. That is
such a lazy take. It's so reductive. Plenty of
women date famous rappers and then they just
disappear six months later. Right. Amber Rose
didn't disappear. She leveraged. She built. And
the key piece of evidence here, the thing that
changed everything, is the Louis Vuitton print
advertisement. This was for Kanye's sneaker line
with LV, right? Yes, the Dawn sneakers. But think
about what Louis Vuitton represents. That's blue
chip luxury. That's Paris, Milan, old money establishment
fashion. It's the pinnacle. It is. For a woman
who started as Paris in a Philly strip club to
be featured in a global campaign for Louis Vuitton.
That legitimized her in the high fashion world
in a way that music videos alone generally do
not. It was a different kind of stamp. She crossed
over. She completely crossed over. She then walked
the runway at New York Fashion Week for the brand
Celestino. And she signed with Ford Models from
2009 to 2010. Ford is a major agency. That's
not a small thing. That is a major legitimate
legacy agency. She managed to be the video vixen
who was also the high fashion model. That duality
is so rare. Usually the fashion world looks down
on the urban modeling world. There's a snobbery
there. A huge snobbery. Amber forced them to
coexist in the same person. She became a logo,
essentially. You could draw a stick figure with
sunglasses and a bald head. And people would
know immediately it was Amber Rose. That is branding
101. It's a unique selling proposition. In a
sea of long flowing hair, she was the silhouette
you couldn't miss. She was instantly iconic.
But fame is fleeting. And being the it girl has
an expiration date, right? And usually when that
high profile relationship ends, the fame just
evaporates. Oof. Gone. Her relationship with
Kanye ended in 2010, but she didn't go away.
Not at all. No. And this brings us to the business
of being Amber. She didn't just ride the wave.
She built a boat. She diversified so aggressively.
And this is where the person listening to this
should really pay attention. She refused to be
pigeonholed. OK, so let's run through the resume
because it is all over the map. She pivots to
television. Yes. reality TV, it acts as a kind
of relevance engine. It just keeps your name
in the press, keeps you in the public eye. She
did Running Russell Simmons. She was a guest
judge on RuPaul's Drag Race. She was a judge
on a DJ show called Master of the Mix. And she
actually competed on Dancing with the Stars in
2016. Right. Partnered with Maxine Tremolkovsky.
She finished ninth. Now, you might hear ninth
place and think, who cares? Yeah, not a winner.
But Dancing with the Stars is a very specific
type of mainstream validation. It puts you in
living rooms with grandmothers in middle America
who have never, ever seen a Young Jeezy video.
It broadens the demographic immensely. It softens
the image. It makes you safe. Exactly. It makes
her a celebrity, not just a hip -hop personality.
She also tried her hand at hosting. She had the
Amber Rose Show on VH1, and maybe even more significantly,
she hosted the syndicated radio show Loveline.
Loveline is huge. That's a legacy franchise.
Dr. Drew's show. Taking over that seat suggests
a real pivot toward advice, toward relationships
and sexuality, which, you know, becomes a major
theme for her later on. 100%. And we can't ignore
the endorsements. She wasn't just wearing clothes.
She was selling products. She was selling vodka.
Oh, yes. Smirnoff. Smirnoff. Yeah. She was the
spokesperson for their whipped cream and fluffed
marshmallow flavors back in 2011. Again, just
maximizing the moment, turning visibility into
cash. But I think the most interesting business
moves are the ones where she creates her own
IP, her own intellectual property. You're talking
about the tech stuff. The tech stuff. In 2016,
she launched Move Emoji. Oh, I remember this
era. It was right after Kim Kardashian had the
Emoji app, and suddenly every celebrity needed
an Emoji app. Exactly. It was a gold rush, a
digital gold rush. And Move Emoji had 900 curated
icons. 900? 900. It sounds trivial now, maybe.
Yeah. But celebrity emoji apps were a massive
revenue stream at that time. It shows she was
watching the tech trends. She wasn't just waiting
for the phone to ring for a modeling gig. She
was building digital assets. And she also became
an author. Simon & Schuster published How to
Be a Bad Bitch. And I love that title because
it's so provocative. But the content was actually
like practical advice. And look at the cover.
It was shot by David LaChapelle. No way. Yes.
That's high art. Meeting Self -Help. The book
covered finances, career, love, fashion. It was
her claiming the role of mentor. She was saying,
look, I made it out of the struggle and here
is the blueprint. But the biggest financial pivot,
and this is the one where we really need to dig
into the numbers, came later. In 2020, she joined
OnlyFans. This is, without a doubt, the most
critical business chapter in her modern career.
We have to understand the shift here, the power
dynamic. For years, the model was Amber poses
for a magazine. The magazine sells ads. The magazine
keeps most of the profit. And Amber gets a flat
fee. Or Amber posts on Instagram. Instagram gets
the data and all the ad revenue. And Amber gets
likes. OnlyFans changed the entire equation.
It's that the creator economy in its purest form.
It's direct to consumer. It's a paywall for intimacy.
And for someone like Amber, whose brand has always
been about hypersexuality and body ownership,
it was a no -brainer. It felt inevitable. It
did. But the numbers. The numbers are just staggering.
Okay, we have data from October 2024. What are
we looking at? In that single month, sources
indicate she earned over $1 .1 million. $1 .1
million in 30 days. In one month. That is more
than most A -list actors make for a generic endorsement
deal that takes months to negotiate with lawyers
and agents and everyone else. And here is the
genius of it. It's a recurring revenue model.
It's a subscription. So it stabilizes the inquiry
volatility that is just inherent to being a celebrity.
That's a great point. If you're an actor, you
don't know when your next movie is. If you have
100 ,000 subscribers paying you a monthly fee,
you can predict your cash flow. You can build
a real sustainable business on that foundation.
It connects right back to that survival instinct
in Philly, doesn't it? It's almost full circle.
How so? Well, she started as Paris in the club,
dancing for individual tips from individual people.
Now she's doing it digitally at a global scale,
keeping nearly 80 % of the revenue. And she never
has to leave her house. It's the ultimate efficiency.
She cut out the middleman, the club owner, the
magazine editor, the TV producer. They're all
gone. It's just Amber and the audience. It is
financial independence through body autonomy.
Speaking of body autonomy, that is the perfect
bridge to her activism, because while she was
building this business empire, she was also becoming
a very loud, very public voice for feminism,
but not the corporate lean in kind of feminism.
This was something grittier. This is the chapter
that usually surprises people who only know the
headlines, who only know the Kanye stuff. In
2015, she founded the Los Angeles chapter of
the Slut Walk. Unpack that for us. For the listener
who might just hear that name, Slut Walk, and
just recoil, what is it? It's a movement that
actually began in Toronto, but Amber really amplified
it and brought it to the mainstream in L .A.
The mission is to honor women who have been judged,
demeaned or assaulted for their sexual behavior
or for how they dress. So it's a protest against
victim blaming. Exactly. The core idea is my
clothes are not my consent. It's that simple
and that radical. She promoted it with this viral
video from Funny or Die called The Walk of No
Shame. I remember it was actually really clever.
She's walking down the street the morning after.
But instead of judging her, everyone is high
fiving her and cheering. Right. It flips the
script. But the motivation behind this wasn't
just a sketch comedy bit. It wasn't just for
laughs. No. And this is where the story gets
very dark. But it's so important to understand
the why. During the first slut walk and in interviews
after, she opened up about a traumatic incident
from her own childhood. This wasn't PR. This
was deeply personal. This is the seven minutes
in heaven story. It's really difficult to hear.
It is. She spoke about being 14 years old. Just
a kid. She was playing that game with... a male
classmate. They go into a closet. And she says
he exposed himself, tricked her into kneeling
down, and then threw the door open to the whole
party. To imply that she was performing oral
sex on him? Yes. To frame her. to humiliate her
in front of everyone. That is just horrific at
14, to be set up like that. It is. And the aftermath
was relentless bullying. She was branded with
these derogatory labels in her neighborhood,
slut, whore. She said she carried that trauma
into her adulthood. So the slut walk was her
way of taking those words back. Precisely. It
is reclaiming the slur. It's the ultimate act
of defiance. If you call me a slut to hurt me,
I'm gonna take that word, I'm gonna put it on
a banner, and I'm gonna march down the street
with thousands of other women to strip it of
its power. It connects her past trauma directly
to her present advocacy. It creates this fascinating
friction, though, doesn't it? You have a woman
who is a former stripper who is actively monetizing
her sexuality on OnlyFans, leading a feminist
march. A lot of traditional feminists didn't
know what to do with her. There was definitely
friction, a lot of debate, but Amber's argument
was always about choice. Feminism, to her, isn't
about covering up or acting a certain way. It's
about the right to do whatever you want with
your body without being assaulted or judged for
it. It's very modern. sex -positive feminism
that challenges a lot of older ideas. No, we
can't talk about Amber Rose without talking about
the relationships. Her romantic life has been
very public, and often it's the thing that drives
the news cycle about her. But I want to look
at this through the lens of how she manages that
narrative. It's true. Her relationships are a
huge part of her public story. We mentioned Kanye
West. That was the breakout relationship that
put her on the map. But her history is extensive
and very high profile. She married the rapper
Wiz Khalifa in 2013. Right. They had a son together,
Sebastian, and they filed for divorce in 2014.
That seemed like a real public heartbreak for
her at the time. It did appear so. And initially
she sought full custody, but they eventually
settled on joint custody. And what's interesting
is they also collaborated artistically. She released
singles with him. She rapped on his album. And
look at how they interact now. It's remarkable.
They have maintained this very visible, very
mature. co -parenting relationship. You see them
at games together, on social media. It's a very
modern family structure. Then after Wiz, there
was 21 Savage. Yeah, they dated from 2017 to
2018. And then Alexander A .E. Edwards. That
relationship started in 2018. They share a son
named Slash, who was born in 2019. But her dating
history isn't just a list of famous rappers.
I mean, she has dated Machine Gun Kelly, the
NBA player Terrence Ross. And she's been very,
very open about the fact that her attraction
isn't limited by gender. This is such a crucial
part of her identity that often gets erased because
her most famous partners have been men. Right.
But she has been open about her fluid sexuality
since at least 2009. There's a quote where she
says, I can be in love with a woman, I can be
in love with a man. It was very direct, very
early in her career. And on her podcast, she
even mentioned dating a trans man. Which again,
just challenges the box people constantly try
to put her in. She is so often framed as the
rapper's girlfriend, which implies this very
heteronormative, almost subservient role. Yeah,
the assessor. The accessory again. But her actual
lived experience is so much more fluid and complex.
She refuses to be defined solely by the men she
dates, even though those men are often the catalyst
for the media attention she receives. It seems
like she uses the spotlight from their relationship.
to illuminate her own projects. It's symbiotic.
It is. She enters the orbit of a star, absorbs
some of that gravity and light, and then spins
off into her own solar system with her own planets.
Okay, now we have to get to the twist. The big
one. The plot twist that I don't think anyone,
and I mean anyone, saw coming. I know where you're
going. We need to talk about the political pivot.
The 2024 election cycle. But before we get to
the RNC stage... We have to establish the baseline
because everything we just discussed, the feminist
slut walk, the LGBTQ advocacy, the fluid sexuality,
being a woman of color, it all points to a very
specific political demographic. It points squarely
to the left, progressive, liberal Democrat. And
in 2016, that's exactly where she was. She is
on record calling Donald Trump an idiot. Not
subtle. Not subtle at all. She said, quote, I
really hope he's not president. It was unequivocal.
There was no ambiguity. She is a feminist, an
LGBTQ advocate, and she identifies as an atheist.
It all seemed to align perfectly with the anti
-Trump resistance. It was a perfect fit. And
then you fast forward eight years to 2024, and
it's a complete 180 degree turn. A hard right
turn. In May 2024, she endorses Donald Trump.
But she doesn't just tweet about it from her
couch. In July 2024, she speaks on stage at the
Republican National Convention. I remember seeing
the clips. It was surreal. The crowd was cheering
for her. And this is the same crowd that, in
theory, opposes a lot of what her entire career
stands for. How does that happen? This is the
part that breaks people's brains. It creates
this huge cognitive dissonance. But if you listen
to her explanation, the one she's given in interviews,
she uses a very specific phrase. She says, I
realized the media lied to me. That's a classic
red pill talking point. That's the language.
It is. And to understand the mechanism of this
shift, we need to look at who she was talking
to and hanging out with in the years leading
up to this. She started doing the rounds on the
so -called Manosphere podcast. Oh, okay. Shows
like The Red Pill, Fresh and Fit, Club Shay.
So she entered an information ecosystem that
is, by its nature, very critical of mainstream
media, very critical of modern feminism, and
very open to Trump's messaging. Exactly. It wasn't
an overnight switch. You can trace it. It was
a gradual absorption of a new information ecosystem.
She was engaging with these creators, listening
to their arguments and finding resonance there.
She felt they were being more honest with her.
But there's also a contrarian streak in her.
Right. A rebellious nature. Oh, a huge one. Amber
Rose hates being told what to do. It might be
her defining characteristic. So if the liberal
Hollywood establishment tells her, you must vote
this way because you are a woman of color and
you are a feminist and this is your team. Her
instinct is to do the opposite. Her instinct,
going all the way back to shaving her head when
everyone said she needed long hair, is to say,
don't tell me what to do. Don't put me in your
box. It's the ultimate punk move, in a way, to
be the one person nobody expects you to be, even
if it alienates your original fan base. She traded
one audience for another. And remember our player
versus chips analogy. By speaking at the RNC,
she was the headline for a week. She dominated
the news cycle. She was trending globally. In
the attention economy, that is a win, regardless
of the political fallout or the criticism. She
made herself the center of the conversation.
It just highlights that she really, truly refuses
to fit into any single box. An atheist, former
stripper, feminist, activist, OnlyFans creator
speaking at the Republican National Convention.
It breaks every single stereotype of political
demographic. It does. It just shatters them.
But if we look at her history. From Paris the
stripper to the buzz cut in the Louis Vuitton
ad, she has always zigged when people expected
her to zag. She seems to thrive on being the
anomaly. So where does this leave us? We've walked
through South Philly, the high fashion runways,
the tech world, the slut walks, and now the political
stage. What's the final picture? I think we're
left with a portrait of a woman who is, above
all else, a survivor and a master of adaptation.
She converts visibility into opportunity. That
seems to be the golden thread that runs through
everything. It is. Whether she is being praised
or criticized, she is being seen. And she knows,
better than almost anyone, how to monetize that
site. She controls her narrative, even when that
narrative shifts so drastically it gives you
whiplash. It really challenges this modern idea
that a personal brand has to be consistent. We're
taught that brands must be on message, right?
They have to be predictable. Exactly. We're taught
that brands must be consistent to build trust.
Amber Rose proves that a brand can be messy,
it can be contradictory, it can be radically
volatile and still be incredibly successful.
So here's the provocative thought to leave you
with today. In a world where most celebrities
hire teams of PR consultants to curate this perfect,
polished, safe image, is Amber Rose's willingness
to be messy, to pivot from calling someone an
idiot to endorsing them, to be a mother and an
OnlyFans creator, is that, in a weird way, the
most authentic brand of all? And regarding her
recent shifts, the politics, the business moves,
is this the final form of Amber Rose? Or are
we just watching the season finale of this current
era with a whole new reinvention coming in the
next one? Knowing her history and that deep -seated
survival instinct, I would not bet against another
reinvention. I wouldn't either. Not for a second.
That's it for this deep dive. Thanks for listening,
and we will catch you on the next one.