As you all may or may not know, my name is Tila Nguyen A.K.A. Tila-T-Gurl, Tila Tequila T-Bird, or T. I decided to re-write my entire life story to give you the down right truth about the real person behind the name. I always find myself bitching every once in a while about how people treat me, how I am human as well and I too have feelings and demand respect. I thought about it for a while and I asked myself, "How can you expect people to treat you like a human being if people don't know the "Real" you? How can you demand respect from everyone when you don't tell the entire truth about who you really are, and what you're all about?"
Well my little darlings, here is now is where it's all going to happen. Think of it as a mini-autobiography about my life and all the shit I've been through. I am very honest, blunt, and very opinionated, therefore I always find myself speaking my mind. So no matter what it is or whom it's associated with, in the end, I always find myself saying......FUCK IT! Life is short....so I'm going to live the way I want and say whatever the fuck it is that's on my mind...and if you don't like what I'm all about or what I have to say....FUCK OFF! Enjoy....
Back when I wasn't even a thought yet, my parents decided to screw one drunken night and had me, Tila Nguyen, 9 months later on October 24th 1981. I was born in Singapore, but I come from a Vietnamese background. Why was I born in Singapore when the rest of my family members were born in Vietnam? Well that's because my parents were trying to escape the poverty stricken lifestyle in Vietnam to give us(their children) hopes to a better future and lifestyle in America. So I guess on their journey to America, they stopped in Singapore first, and that's when a miracle came into the world....I'm speaking of myself, of course! At the time I was born, I already had an older brother and an older sister. Soon after I was born we continued our journey to America. I was probably about 1 or 2 years old when I arrived to America. So naturally I was raised as a little American Hellcat in the suburbs of Houston, Texas. From that moment on.....life as we knew it, would all change....
I remember from the ages 4 to 8 I lived in a Buddhist temple. To me, I remember it was more like a cult than anything. We had very strict, strict rules. I don't think our temple was like any other. There was an entire community full of them! And there were kids just like me there....stuck there because we had no other choice. We all lived in a very private community that was gated all around so no strangers would be allowed to enter. Even worse, we couldn't even leave without telling the gatekeeper first where we were going. It was more like hell to me! I mean, don't get me wrong, everybody there was super nice, but I think we all fell into the spell of some kind of trance....like I said, it was kinda like a cult...but nothing bad....just kinda weird. I remember feeling so trapped like I had no freedom. I'd go to school, come home and ride my bike around the gated community.
I remember glancing out beyond the gates one time and wanting so badly to go outside to play. I remember wanting so much to see what the world was like beyond the gates, beyond all the green trees and leaves surrounding, and hiding our community. I wondered how my life would be and how different things would be if only my parents would move.
My sister and I felt the same way....I'm sure my brother especially felt the same, but sadly for some reason....we were not so close, although I always wished that we were....So anyway, we kept bitching to my parents about how badly we wanted to move away. How we wanted more freedom and be able to live freely, after all, isn't that the reason why we came to America in the first place??? So my parents finally decided that we were right, that it would be best for the entire family to move away and live our own lives the way we wished. I remember finding out the great news and I was happier than ever!
I was so extremely excited that I was finally moving away from that gated community! But at the same time I felt a sudden sadness. A sadness for the friends that I'd made and grew up with in that community that I had to now leave behind.
I felt sad that I would be able to discover what freedom really meant while my friends would still be stuck there....all alone. But at least now, a part of my heart will be able to soar like an eagle in the sky. With my new found freedom I will be able to find out more about myself and what life is all about. What a liberating feeling!
MY Adolescent Years:
In my adolescent years....oh boy! SO much shit happened to me! Hahaa! I don't even know where to begin. Well you know how there are some people out there you know now that were like TOTAL DORKS back then(not that anything is wrong with that, because I LOVE dorks!)? To be honest though, I was never a dork. I was always the same wild child I am today for the longest that I can remember.
I was always that popular kid in elementary school, middle school, and highschool, but I was always the nice popular kid. I was always sticking up for all the nerds and beating up the people that were so called, "better than everyone." You know those people that went around thinking the were the shit and picked on "nerds" because they thought that would make them cool? Yea well, those were the people I usually picked on and beat up....not the dorks and dweebs.
I guess I did that because I felt that the so called, "dorks and dweebs" kept it real and didn't try hard to "fit in." I was always more drawn to people who had their own style and were leaders, not followers. It's funny because I remember even at that young of an age, I was still very extreme and wild...I had the time of my life growing up.
Elementary School:
I still remember my first few crushes in elementary school. Roberto, David, Puyon, and Chris. I remember my first attempt to ever send a guy a little "Love Letter." It was Valentines Day, and I had the BIGGEST crush on David. He was a grade above me, but dammit, he was soooo HOT! Even though I was only in the 2nd grade, I still had balls...haha! I remember sneaking out of my class and going to David's class.
I pretended that I had left something there so that would give me an excuse to come in. Then I went to David's desk(he wasn't there yet) and slipped in a little Valentine's card. I wrote him a little 2nd grade love letter and even stuck on a big, red heart sticker on the card along with a lollipop shaped like a heart. I was pretty nervous because I didn't know what was going to happen after that, but I guess I'll find out during gym. So I had butterflies in my stomach the entire day and I was really anxious to see David during gym class to see what he had to say....well...the time finally came and I finally saw David.....David saw me and all he said was, "I'm gonna kick your ass!" Oh my god, was I embarrassed!
I gave my biggest crush, David, a love letter pronouncing my undying love for him and all he could say to me was, "I'm gonna kick your ass!?" Hahahahahaha! Needless to say....nothing ever came of that! Hahahaa! But I think back and I guess that's just a child's way to react to crushes...you know, the usual, beat each other up if you like one another type thing....haha! So anyway, I was a pretty decent kid in elementary school. The teachers usually liked me and so did my peers...I had fun!
Middle School:
Now moving on to middle school....now THIS is where my personality really came about and when I grew into my rebellious stage. I remember being 11 years old, and was still a pretty short kid. On top of that, I used to wear size 30 men's pants with huge construction boots along with huge button-down men's polo shirts or Tommy Hillfiger shirts. I would sport my dickies outfits every so often and my pants would be sagging down to the ground..haha! I was like this hot little boy! Hahahaa! I remember going to a very preppy middle school where ALL the teachers HATED me! FUCK THEM! They didn't want to give me a chance because they thought I was a thug (well I sorta was one)....soooo....I gave them what they wanted.
I beat up everyone at their oh so precious prep school....My middle school was called Albright Middle School....I remember people used to call my middle School, Albright All White....hahaa! And it was SO true! At that time all my peers were going off having sex and being sluts. I decided I'd rather take the alternative route and just beat people up. I was the school bully, believe it or not! People were really scared little 'ol me back then...hahaha! I even got into a HUGE fight with this one black guy that claimed to be in some gang. Everyone at school was scared of him as well....except for me.
So now the question is...how the hell did I get into a fight with a guy??? Well it started off as a crush. His name was Corey. Corey used to have a crush on me. He'd always try to flirt and get with me....but I was quite annoyed by him. So one day in science class I was really fed up with him. He kept bugging me and kept making these sexual remarks. I was like, "Leave me the fuck alone, I'm sick!" Then Corey annoyingly said, "Oh, I got some medicine fo ya, ma dick in yo pussy!" That's when I got up and pushed him. From that moment, he was threatening me, "Imma getcha at lunch bitch!"
So lunchtime came around and while the class was walking downstairs to lunch Corey kept pushing me saying, "What's up, bitch? What's up!?" I was with a girlfriend at that time and she was just telling me to ignore him, but knowing me, to ignore this creep was out of the question! So he pushed me from behind for the last time before I turned around and socked him in his face! Everything after that was a blur...all I remember was the noise, the crowd and all the commotion. Amongst all that craziness going on around me, I remember seeing Corey's big fist going in slow motion towards my face. Everything was in slow motion for some reason. So I turned my head so I wouldn't get hit in the face. Corey ended up hitting me on the back of my head. I turned back around and saw another fist coming at my again! Next thing you know, I guess the teachers pulled him back and tried to pull me back...so I elbowed my science teacher in the stomach to run after Corey! I was a 4 ft. 11 madwoman! Hahahaha! I just remember seeing Corey on the ground so I kicked him in his balls. All I could remember next was being slammed into the lockers. The principle came out and grabbed me. FUCK! Hahaa! After that fight....EVERYONE at school was talking about it! I became a legend! Hahahaa! But at the same time, all the teachers were fed up with me. I guess you can say that was the last straw...so the principle sent me away to a school for "bad kids" for 6 months. Everyone at that school had MAJOR problems and were all on medication....puhahaha! Anyway, to make a long story short, I continued to be rebellious and bad. Nothing worked on me.
So finally I did my time for the 6 months at that school for "Bad Kids." I was happy to be out, but this time, I told my parents that if they transferred me to a different middle school....that I promise I would be a good kid and stay out of trouble. Well, what parents would say no to that??? Haha! So I got transferred to this brand new middle school that was just built that year. It was O'Donnell Middle School. I was so stoked! To make a long story short, I tried my best to not get into trouble. I no longer bullied people around at my new school....but I think that was because something else was on my mind.....that's right....BOYS!!!! Mmmmm....hehehee...It was very strange because I could never get any guys to like me(not that I know of). I used to have so many crushes back then, but for some reason...the guys I liked always ended up hooking up with some other chick. I was always aggressive...even back then. I remember I wanted a boyfriend SO bad! I wanted to know what it was like to kiss a guy. I wanted to know how it felt to belong to somebody. I guess that's where my aggression came in. I was not shy at all. I remember going up to a crush one day and confidently said, "Hey, you are SO cute, I want to kiss you!" I even used to try to trick people into kissing me by going to school around the holidays with a mistletoe....I thought to myself, "If I carry around a mistletoe, and hold it under the guys I like...then they HAVE to kiss me!" Hahahaa! I know...I'm such a dork! But sadly it didn't work...=( I mean, I think I was pretty cute back then and I even started dressing a little more feminine.....but it dawned on me one day why guys wouldn't talk to me or ask me out. It's not that they didn't like me, it was because the guys were probably intimidated by me, and intimidated by how up front and aggressive I was. I was a pretty wild child after all and would probably punch your lights out if you pissed me off! Haha! So anyway, once that realization kicked in....I felt much better....hahaa! SO SCREW YOU BOYS! I hope you guys (the ones who didn't want to talk to me) are reading this now! *Cough* Peter *Cough* haha!
TO BE CONTINUED.....
There are as many stories and paths to celebrity as there are celebrities, but in just two years time, Tila Tequila has possibly become THE symbol of the cult of personality that has developed in the digital age. The 25 year old striking, sexy siren has been on the cover and/or featured in numerous magazines - such as Time, Maxim, and Rolling Stone’s "Hot Issue" - for being the most "friended" person on the social networking site MySpace.com. Cast as a phenomenal "insta-star" of sorts, she’s already racked up nearly 2 million dedicated fans, and as the popular men’s magazine Stuff said, is now the "Web’s hottest Mama".
The phenomenon of Tila Tequila is a story of being an icon of the cultural zeitgeist where the lines of pop culture, personal technology and raw talent intertwine to yield a feisty, magnetic pop music star on the verge.
Tila’s popularity in today’s Web World is unparalleled and has helped earn the sultry Vietnamese ex-model recognition that most people would die for. But the charisma fans see in the glint of her eye, the curve of her hip and the mischief on her lips will soon be echoed as she begins to unleash her music and fulfill a dream she’s always harbored and, more importantly, is equipped to accomplish.
"People don’t know what to expect from me and, in a way, I like that," Tila says of her music career. "They’re shocked when they hear my music." A mix of hip-hop style, dance-club energy, and punk rock bravado, Tila’s music is unabashedly fiery, upbeat and, most importantly, fun. "I grew up listening to all types of music and have made a lot of musician friends from all sorts of genres along the way who encouraged me and helped me mold everything I like into my own sound."
If Tila’s music sounds like a cultural mash-up, it’s only fitting given her background. Born in Singapore to French-Vietnamese parents, Tila grew up in Houston, Texas in an environment that mimicked many immigrant families who moved from poorer countries to the United States. "It was me, my sister, brother, mom and dad in one room," she describes. "We only had one bed. There were flying roaches everywhere. We were very poor." If Tila’s childhood was economically challenged, her adolescence was more behaviorally challenged.
"Quite frankly, I was a bad kid," Tila says, admitting she was also a plain-Jane tomboy. "I was lost, truly lost. I had no good role models, no one to really look after me. I ran around doing my own thing without a set group of friends to lean on." Tila’s "me-against-the-world" destructive mentality also found her in a world of drug abuse (a topic she’s not shy to talk about now), a couple of run-ins with the police, and a three-month runaway detour to New York.
By 17, she had hit bottom and knew it was time to turn her life around. "I had friends dying and going to jail. My family life and my personal life were bad. I was lonely and lost. I knew that if I didn’t change, I was going to die."
Tila started to stay away from the things that were making her so self-destructive and take better care of herself. She had been writing a lot of poetry since she was a kid – "an outlet for my frustrations," she says – but now, her creative expression became a valuable stepping stone for her own salvation. "I’ve always loved music and singing and plays and acting; but when you’re a bad kid, it’s not considered even an option. I started to really focus on that side of me – and that saved me."
18-years old, re-energized and armed with the life experiences of someone much older, Tila started to break out of her shell. She accepted an invitation to model for a friend’s local Houston car show calendar, coming to grips with her own sexuality and maturation into a woman. "It was really strange for the people around me because they only knew me as this scrappy, tom boy kid," Tila says. A modeling agency scout from California soon saw her at a local car show and recruited her to work in Los Angeles. "I couldn’t grasp the concept of me being sexy. Soon after, I realized, ‘hey I have something people like’. People liked working with me and I’m very easy to get along with. After that, I just worked it."
Because of her balance of sex appeal and accessibility, Tila exploded in the urban modeling world, becoming a fixture on auto import magazine covers and layouts, pinup calendars, and car show events. She toured America with Hot Import Nights, a prominent car show exhibition company, and quickly became a fan favorite on the road. At 19 years old, Tila created her own website and smartly employed it as a way for the people she met on tour to keep in touch with her. Even then, she was a web phenomenon. "It was really easy for me to just meet people. Everything I didn’t have growing up, I was finding in this new experience on the web," she says.
Tila’s career started to extend beyond the urban modeling world. She was scouted by Playboy and, in the media empire’s expanding digital front, became a Playboy Cyber Girl, the first ever Asian woman to do so. She eventually was a star of the VH1 reality show "Surviving Nugent" and was a frequent host of Fuse TV’s popular show, "Pants Off Dance Off."
Around the same time, Tila was joining the burgeoning world of online communities. "I love the internet. Because my own website was so helpful to me, I was just getting addicted to these friend sites like Friendster and what not." Soon, she joined the start-up site MySpace after a personal invitation from the company’s owner, who recognized her strong web presence. "I mass emailed my mailing list of 40,000 people and told my fans to keep me company. And it just snowballed from there."
Tila’s modeling gigs and well-publicized MySpace popularity, though, have given her a big platform and set the stage for her true creative aspiration: music. "I realized I wanted to do this seriously and really get out there," she says. Driven by her own insatiable curiosity, she taught herself how to play guitar and keyboards. From the money she was making modeling, she eventually got together her own home studio piece by piece to start crafting her music. "It’s funny because people probably think I’m just this helpless little girl but I worked hard, man. I built a studio in my loft by myself, taught myself how to use Pro Tools and started demo-ing songs on my computer." What she didn’t teach herself, Tila found through support from her musician friends, who helped her develop the art of songwriting.
Tila’s attitude, fiery moxy and talent together create music that represents the cultural mash-up of today’s popular culture. Like Gwen Stefani, Fergie, M.I.A., Lady Sovereign and other hit-makers, Tila Tequila takes pleasure in referencing different genres of music, from hip-hop and electronic club beats to brash punk and deliciously pop.
Fans will not be surprised to find Tila Tequila unleashing her music on the world in a unique way. At a time when the business model of music is changing rapidly, Tila has chosen to take her own unique path over the traditional route of signing a major label deal (though she has been shown great interest by several).
Tila’s goal is not only to make a place for herself in the musical landscape, but to use her unique positioning as a web-created phenomenon to help change the entire music business.
The fearlessness harnessed from her past has given her enough strength and resolve to take a new route in her music career by turning down major record deals in favor of staying in control of her own rights and art, and allowing her to continue to chart a new course in how things are done in entertainment.
Part of that process will allow her to unleash her recordings on the public in unconventional ways. "I Love U", the first song to drop, produced by platinum crunkmaster Lil Jon, will be launched online and will only be available digitally. "The song’s the opposite of what it means. I have so many guy friends who go through so many problems with their jealous girlfriends, that I wrote a song from their girl’s perspective, the psycho stuff."
"I understand because of my background and how I got popular that many people won’t be sure if I’m for real or not. But I work so fucking hard, and I challenge anyone who is skeptical to check it out and see for themselves."
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Tila Tequila (ID #59673)
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