Kim

by Sean Smith

  The reviews were uninspiring. The Liverpool Echo critic wrote, ‘I’m her biggest fan, but her new song is so cheesy! I think she should stick to what she knows best.’ The New York Daily News was the most unpleasant, saying that Kim was the worst singer ever to come out of a reality series. The reviewer called ‘Jam (Turn It Up)’ a ‘dead-brained piece of generic dance music, without a single distinguishing feature.’ He wasn’t any kinder about her singing, which he thought ‘a bit of breathing that’s been auto-tuned into something vaguely approximating a vocal.’

  The track was nothing like as bad as that. The overall sound came across as retro, harking back to the catchy Scandinavian sounds of the late nineties chart band Aqua. Sales weren’t strong enough for the song to reach even the lower echelons of the charts in the US, with only 14,000 downloads in its first week on iTunes.

  For some reason, the video was never released. Kim posted some stills. Six months later, some footage did show up of Kim in a white top and hot pink shorts, writhing around suggestively. The implication was that the video was completed with a view to being released only if the song performed well.

  Kim quickly distanced herself from the project, maintaining that there was no record deal and there would be no album. Both Kourtney and Khloé said the video was for their sister’s eyes only, which made it sound like it was a sex tape. The celebrity gossip columnist Perez Hilton pointed out sarcastically that she had hired Hype Williams, practically the biggest name in the business, to produce a video just for private use.

  For once, Kim’s sense of humour failed her. Several years later, in 2014, she called the song a fun experience, but something she shouldn’t have done. She confessed, ‘What gave me the right to think I could be a singer? Like, I don’t have a good voice.’

  Despite her hopes for the future, her relationship with Reggie Bush had foundered. She had been so positive about it. They first admitted to problems in the summer of 2009, and put them down to spending too much time apart. Kim couldn’t give up her life and career in Los Angeles, where Keeping Up with the Kardashians was filmed: ‘It’s not going to be much of a show if I’m in New Orleans separated from my family.’ For his part, Reggie seemed unable to make the commitment to the future that Kim was looking for.

  They managed to rekindle the romance later that year, and Kim was thrilled when the Saints won the Super Bowl in February 2010. The E! cameras filmed her running on to the pitch to give her man a kiss of congratulations. That made it seem a little staged, especially as her mother was in attendance.

  By the end of March, it was all over for the second time. She had been genuinely fond of Reggie, but he was no longer a priority in her life. She was determined to work even harder and make the most of her chance of lasting fame.

  14

  Dating Her Work

  Kim was getting a reputation for being a workaholic. She was completely driven to make her business a success. She observed, ‘You have to stay committed. Some people start and stop, or get a bit lazy. Every year my mom and I write out a goal sheet.’ Her elder sister Kourtney commented, ‘She’s dating her work.’

  When Keeping Up with the Kardashians began, only Kris took it as seriously as Kim did. Kim was desperate for it to do well, while her sisters viewed themselves as store owners dabbling in television. They would fool around when the ‘boss’, as they called Kim, wasn’t in the room. They would be jumping on the sofas and pushing each other about like a pair of playful puppies.

  Kim and her mother were busy forging a formidable partnership. They were both proving to be smart businesswomen. It would have been lovely for Kim to have been nominated for an Oscar instead of a Golden Raspberry, or to have won Dancing with the Stars, but neither was meant to be. The consolation was that she was keeping herself in the conversation. She was being talked about at water coolers, even when she failed at something.

  It was as if Kim stood in front of a mirror and decided how best to utilise every bit of herself from top to bottom and head to toe. She would take every opportunity that came her way and make sure she was personally involved and not just a celebrity robot. An endorsement for ShoeDazzle, another for Famous Cupcakes and a fitness DVD were just the start of her empire building.

  As her fame grew, so did her confidence and, more and more, she became her own woman. She embraced social media and was rumoured to be paid as much as $10,000 for announcing on Twitter that she liked a particular salad. She told her then 2.7 million followers at the start of 2010: ‘The Carl’s Jr. grilled chicken salads came out yesterday! I’m on my way to Carl’s Jr. for lunch now … Have you tried them yet?’

  The parent company behind the campaign, CKE Restaurants, said, ‘Kim is an absolute Internet sensation and she has a vast audience that is already following her online. Her site is heavily trafficked as well.’ They wanted to target ‘young, hungry guys and gals’ – exactly the people who followed her online and on the show. She even hosted ‘The Ultimate Salad Lunch Date’, in which she interacted with fans, while nibbling on a cranberry, apple and walnut grilled chicken salad in 2009.

  This was one minor example of Kim’s thoroughness. This was treating business responsibly – a lesson first learned from her father and then from her energetic, driven mother. It wasn’t rocket science, but it worked. Kim’s campaign was deemed more successful than all the company’s previous celebrity campaigns put together, including 1.8 million views for a 30-second commercial on YouTube and a further 2.1 million views for all the other Kim-related salad videos. The number following her on Twitter almost doubled that year to more than 5 million – a magnet for endorsement deals.

  Brad Haley, an executive vice-president with Carl’s Jr, was impressed: ‘Kim Kardashian has been an absolute joy to work with and her genuine charm, charisma, beauty and brains have endeared her to a huge base of fans.’ The food chain initially wanted her to front a campaign for a burger, but found that she really wasn’t good at eating burgers. She was, in any case, on a low-carb diet. It was lucky that they had a new salad option on the menu at the right time.

  While the ink was drying on one contract, another was being prepared for signature. Kim became the face of FusionBeauty, the international skincare brand. All three sisters signed a retail deal for their own fashion line with the bebe chain. They did the same for a range of outfits for Beach Bunny Swimwear and began a beauty line with a self-tanning gel called Glamour Tan.

  In February 2010, Kim brought out her own perfume called Kim Kardashian, the ‘voluptuous new fragrance’. It had always been an ambition to have her name on a fragrance. Her dad would always bring her a bottle of perfume when he returned from a trip away. He gave her the first-ever scent she used, Tribu by Benetton, after a visit to New York. They don’t make it any more, but she kept the distinctive yellow bottle, with the garish red top, safe in her dressing room because it reminded her of him.

  She moved on from Tribu to Angel by Thierry Mugler. The only problem with that was her father would invariably buy a bottle for whichever girlfriend he had at the time. When he broke up with any of them, Kim, being loyal to her dad, would hate the women and the scent would remind her of them. She had to give up wearing it. Her own fragrance had a hint of gardenia in it, her father’s favourite smell. No sooner had the first Kim Kardashian fragrance hit the shops than she was working with her team to produce a second, called Gold.

  In August, she teamed up with Loren Ridinger to design a luxury range of earrings for a new jewellery line, the Kim Kollection. Then she released a line of signature watches. It was relentless. She was paid huge sums just for turning up at a club – a $20,000 fee soon grew to $100,000, a reflection of the power of television and her growing popularity.

  The branding philosophy of the Kardashians was simple: first, extend your brand as far as you can and always react to situations – if you put on weight, land a deal to promote diet supplement pills; secondly, be as visible and share as much as possible – the public are as interested in the bad time
s as the good; thirdly, use Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and any other online method you can think of to connect with the public.

  In 2010, there were more online searches for Kim Kardashian than for Barack Obama or Justin Bieber. At the end of the year, she topped a list of the highest-earning reality TV stars, with an estimated $6 million. Khloé and Kourtney were seventh and eighth with $2.5 million. Kris Jenner didn’t make the list but, if her 20 per cent fee for being their manager were taken into account, it would have earned her nearly $3.7 million.

  Kim’s earnings had grown so fast that it was time to look for a new home. She wanted to stay in Beverly Hills to be close to her friends and favourite haunts. She found a Tuscan-style villa for $4.8 million in a quiet cul de sac off Mulholland Drive. Her new mansion had five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a Regal pool and Jacuzzi, media room and fireplaces outside for cool winter evenings. The garden boasted an immaculate lawn and a waterfall.

  The original idea was that she would move into it with Reggie, but that didn’t work out, so she was a single girl in a luxurious mansion. It was more private than her lovely condominium in South Clark Drive, which she put on the market for a little over $1 million. She liked the high walls and security gates that kept the paparazzi at bay until she was ready to greet them with a smile and pose for a picture.

  She was working so hard, there seemed to be little time for her to enjoy her new home. Certainly, since Keeping Up with the Kardashians began, she appeared to have the least exciting private life of the four Kardashian siblings.

  She wasn’t the first to have a child. That honour belonged to her elder sister Kourtney. At 5ft 0in, Kourtney is the smallest Kardashian and, by reputation, the most intelligent – at least academically. In the first episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, we were introduced to the relationship between her and boyfriend Scott Disick, which has been a constant in the programme ever since.

  Scott, who is three years younger than Kourtney, proved to be an asset to the show, because he was always antagonising Kris or Khloé and seemed to be on the verge of splitting with Kourtney or marrying her. He is a man of mystery in that nobody seems to know what he actually does for a living.

  He didn’t grow up as one of the Beverly Hills set, although his parents, Jeff and Bonnie, were well-off residents of Eastport, Long Island. The family money came from the real estate business of attorney David Disick, who was Jeff’s father. Scott’s only claim to fame as a teenager was as a young male model for the covers of a series of adolescent romance novels. He is pictured as a handsome young man gazing meaningfully into the distance in poses designed to make teen girls swoon. The grown-up Scott was a bit of a bad boy – perfect for a show dominated by women.

  The relationship between Kourtney and Scott, who has a reputation as a man who enjoys a party, has never been one of cosy, happy families. They split up for the first time in 2009, during which time he allegedly saw other people, but they got back together when she discovered she was pregnant.

  Scott and Kourtney had their first child, Mason Dash Disick, on 14 December 2009. His arrival at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center on Beverly Boulevard – hospital to the stars – was shown on an episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians. At the end of the delivery, Kourtney leaned forward, carefully pulled the baby out and laid him on her stomach. The birth was actually filmed by Scott, using a video camera, and the footage was handed over to the technicians at E! to make it suitable for broadcast.

  Scott appeared to have anger issues during the filming of one of the show’s spin-offs, Kourtney and Khloé Take Miami, in which he punched a wall mirror during a drunken argument. Once more, they split amid rumours that Scott had an alcohol problem. He attended therapy, and they were reunited. He told Ryan Seacrest in an interview, ‘I had to take a look at where my life is going – or where it was going to go if I kept acting the way I was.’

  Kourtney turned out to be a natural mother, which surprised her family, who had always cast Kim in that role. Kourtney had seemed the sister least bothered about having children. Instead, she doted on her son, who was soon crawling around happily while the cameras kept running in the reality house. She became very protective of her boy, politely but firmly refusing all requests from fans who wanted to take a selfie with the newest member of the Kardashian clan.

  She returned to work, helping to run DASH, which had now expanded with branches in Miami and New York. It gave the producers at E! the excuse to devise the spin-off series featuring Kourtney.

  Kim also wasn’t the first of the sisters to say ‘I do’ on the show. Khloé married NBA basketball player Lamar Odom, after knowing him for just a month.

  Khloé had always seemed the most volatile and unpredictable of the three sisters. She had gone her own way as a teenager; she was home schooled and never had a steady boyfriend. Disappointed to receive a used car for her sixteenth birthday, she decided her mother wouldn’t miss her Range Rover if she took it for a joyride with some friends. She dropped it off at a valet stand while she went to a party and returned to find it in flames: ‘My friends and I saw this car on fire and we were like, “Whoa, that person is screwed!” And then I was like, “Fuck, that’s my car!”’

  Khloé was hurt in a serious car accident when she was 16. Apparently, she was thrown through the windscreen. As a result of her injuries, she suffers from short-term memory loss. She was knocked unconscious and suffered damage to her knees that required three operations to correct.

  She was unimpressed when she met 6ft 10in Lamar, a star player with the LA Lakers, at a welcoming party for the team’s new signing, Ron Artest, one of the most famous players of the era. Khloé was there with her younger brother Rob and was irritated by a man she didn’t know staring at her.

  In a loud voice, she declared, ‘You’re so rude. You’re staring at me.’

  Rob tried to keep her quiet. ‘Please be nice,’ he said. ‘That’s Lamar Odom. He’s like the best basketball player.’

  She recalled, ‘I did not like Lamar. I hated him.’ She thought him a typical and annoying basketball player.

  A week later, she had clearly changed her mind. The pair were spotted laughing and joking over dinner at STK Los Angeles. Khloé invited him to meet Kris and Bruce at their home in Calabasas. They became engaged 26 days after they met.

  Lamar’s upbringing couldn’t have been more different than the Kardashian children’s. His father, Joe Odom, was a heroin addict. His mother, Cathy Mercer, a prison officer at the Rikers Island Correctional Facility, was left to bring him up as a single parent. They lived in the notorious South Jamaica area of Queens, New York. The neighbourhood, which was also home to the rapper 50 Cent, was wrecked by the crack cocaine epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s when Lamar was a boy. He observed, ‘Any time you see these inner city kids in the NBA [National Basketball Association] … you’ve got to understand their background wasn’t all peaches and cream.’

  Lamar was left devastated when his mother died from colon cancer when he was 12. He recalled, ‘She got sick in January and by July she was gone. It was tough to see somebody you love so much hurting like that.’

  Instead of disappearing into an uncompromising urban world, Lamar was taken in by his grandmother, Mildred Mercer, and, because of his height, made rapid progress in high school basketball. He was so good, Parade magazine named him Player of the Year in 1997, when he was 18.

  He joined the Los Angeles Clippers at the age of 20. He moved from there to Miami Heat on a six-year contract worth a reported $65 million. He was selected for the US team for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens; they won the bronze medal.

  He stayed in Miami for only a year, however, before going back to LA – this time with the Lakers. He said, ‘This is a dream come true. This is the Yankees of basketball. The big stage.’ His team, which also included Kobe Bryant, won back-to-back NBA championships in 2009 and 2010.

  Lamar was by now one of the richest young sportsmen in the country, and he had a steady girlfriend. Liza
Morales was his high school sweetheart and the mother of his three children. He was 18 when they had their first child, a daughter called Destiny. Two sons followed: Lamar Jr in 2005 and Jayden in 2006. Tragically, their youngest son died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (cot death) before he was seven months old.

  Lamar and Liza eventually separated and he met Khloé not long afterwards. Liza couldn’t believe it when she suddenly got a text saying he was getting married. She admitted, ‘There aren’t words to explain how I felt that day.’

  Kris Jenner had just nine days to organise the wedding. Fortunately, a wedding planner was called in to help. The E! cameras followed the whirlwind arrangements: registering for gifts, fittings for the Vera Wang wedding dress, bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner and, of course, the wedding itself.

  The ceremony was held in the garden of the Beverly Hills mansion belonging to the Kardashians’ best friends, Irving and Shelli Azoff. Kim and Kourtney were bridesmaids, also dressed in Vera Wang, and Bruce walked his stepdaughter down an aisle decorated with white roses. A 10-piece orchestra played during the ceremony and later Babyface sang at the reception in a marquee in another part of the property.

  A film crew captured the whole day for Keeping Up with the Kardashians and the episode was the most watched in the history of the programme with 3.2 million viewers. During the festivities, Ryan Seacrest was overheard saying they were thinking of yet another spin-off, involving Khloé and Lamar.

  Among the guests was the singer and actress Adrienne Bailon, who was Rob’s girlfriend for two years and had been a regular on the show during that time. They had split unexpectedly, and Rob later admitted that he had strayed during their time together. She said, ‘He strategically planned things out so that he could cheat on me, and that to me was disloyal.’ She had a new boyfriend called Lenny Santiago, an executive with Roc Nation, by the time of the wedding, so there was little chance of them getting back together.