Tila Tequila

Photo Gallery

• Genre: Dance Pop
• Tila Tequila Website

About

Tila Tequila is the celebrity of the future. She's been a Playboy model, reality show contestant, host of a striptease dance contest (Fuse TV's classic "Pants-Off Dance-Off"), host of her own reality show, fashion designer and, now, singer. But the multitasker's real talent is marketing -- or, more accurately, savvy self-exploitation via everything MySpace has to offer. Born Tila Nguyen, she emigrated as a toddler with her Vietnamese family from Singapore to Houston, Texas, where she earned a reputation for being rebellious -- and the nickname Tila Tequila. By eighteen, the bad girl had moved to L.A. and begun the process of turning being bad into a highly profitable multi-industry enterprise. Naturally, she started with MySpace, creating a profile that was at once smoking hot and approachable, complete with a candid blog and plenty of money shots in her photo gallery. She ended up with nearly two million friends, a single produced by Lil Jon and an EP titled -- what else? -- Sex. In short, Tila Tequila took two of the entertainment industry's classic moves -- sexing up starlets and making people famous for nothing -- and applied them to herself. Just call her a DIY celebutante.

- Rachel Devitt