Recent Blog Posts
-
Smoking Lingerie Leads to Lawsuit
Nov 23 20093:11 pm EDT -
Oops
Nov 23 200912:01 am EDT -
The Era of the Renminbi Is at Hand
Nov 20 20092:55 pm EDT -
Computer Glitch Snarls Air Traffic
Nov 19 200910:29 am EDT -
Dollar Doldrums? What Dollar Doldrums?
Nov 19 20098:48 am EDT -
American Express Makes a Revolutionary Deal
Nov 18 200912:05 pm EDT -
Calpers Puts Pressure on Private Equity Funding and Fees
Nov 18 200910:27 am EDT -
Madoff Makes Millions (for Others)
Nov 18 20096:04 am EDT -
Lazard Looks Within Its Ranks for New Chief
Nov 17 20091:44 pm EDT -
A Brutal Morning for Geithner
Nov 17 20098:02 am EDT
Spitzer's Siren Song
You've seen "Kristen." But have you heard her?
"Sex, money, drugs is what I'm all about," she sings on Move Ya Body, a single that appeared for sale early this morning on Amiestreet.com, a New York-based music startup, which prices songs based on popularity.
"Kristen," the 22-year-old prostitute who traveled from New York to Washington to spend the evening with Governor Eliot Spitzer of New York, according to a federal affidavit, has been identified as Ashley Alexandra Dupré, born Ashley Youmans, from New Jersey. And she wants to be a pop star.
As of early this morning, over one million people have downloaded her innuendo-laden hip-hop single What We Want on MySpace. Nearly three million people have viewed her profile, and her blog now has nearly 1,000 comments, almost all of them supportive.
On Amiestreet.com, What We Want is available for 98 cents, the website's maximum price per song. Yesterday morning the song was offered for free. By 8 p.m. last night the song cost 30 cents. By 10 p.m., 76 cents. By 11 p.m., the maximum rate of 98 cents, according to Silicon Alley Insider.
At this rate, Dupré could be a millionaire in a week's time. (In an indication of her new celebrity, Dupré's even got her own bogus Tumblr blog, a la Fake Steve Jobs, called "High-Class Hooker With A Heart Of Gold.")
On her MySpace page, Dupré, who has a taste for Aretha Franklin and Frank Sinatra, as well as hip hop, describes her life.
"I am all about my music, and my music is all about me," Dupré writes. "When I was 17, I left home...Left a broken family. Left abuse...Learned what it was like to wake up one day and have the people you care about most gone...I have abused drugs. I have been broke and homeless. But, I survived, on my own."
Referring to her song What We Want, Dupré writes the following, which seems eerily appropriate this week.
"This one was inspired by a guy, who taught me not to confuse my dreams with the sounds of the city."
In a blog post on MySpace from last summer, Dupré asks what kinds of people she should "surround" herself with.
Dupré's first criterion: "What is this person doing to make my life better? (financial, intel, drive, networking etc.)"
by Sam Gustin
