By RODNEY HO/rho@ajc.com, originally filed September 2, 2011
Kandi Burruss, wearing a skin-tight dress with a sparkly mid-riff, promoted her intimate toy line called Bedroom Kandi at Shout restaurant in Midtown.
The party featured Liberator sex cushions, a display of Kandi's toys and topless men with eight-packs massaging women and dispensing lamb chops and egg rolls.
Her toys include a vibrator that resembles lipstick for discretion and a toy that links wirelessly to your sound system so it vibrates to the beat of the music. Burruss, mind you, is a Grammy-winning songwriter and musician so that's a perfect tie.
"The line is not raunchy," she said. "It's cool and sophisticated."
Her toys won't be available for sale until late October, she said. You can pre-order soon at mybedroomkandi.com.
Burruss, who also has a stake in Tags boutique in Smyrna, is big on talking about sex on her on-line show Kandi Koated Nights so this all ties in nicely. She said she was inspired by Dr. Laura Berman , who has her own line of sex toys and wanted to get into that field herself.
A certain TV show had cameras there. (I signed a confidentiality agreement in which I agreed not to identify this TV show. The agreement included the word "disgorgement," which sounds dirty and vaguely threatening. The network could sue me if I disclosed information they think would hurt said show.) I ended up leaving before other members of this particular popular TV show showed up so it ended up being a moot point. And no, the show in question is not "60 Minutes." Morley Safer was nowhere in sight. Nice guess.
I was unable to talk to Burruss at the party. (Said network kind of monopolized her time and I ran out of patience.)
Fortunately, her sweet publicist got Burruss on the phone with me this morning. The cast of her show did eventually show up in full after I left, she said.
"It was a nice crowd," she said. "I loved the way my party planner decorated. She did a great job with the food and the guys from Pampered Touch."
Asked how her personal life is going, she said, "I'm not in any serious relationship. The toys work out perfect for me!"
On the music side, she hasn't had much of a chance to work with any big R&B artists but surprisingly hooked up with country artist Jo Dee Messina. "Country is something I always wanted to do," she said. "We wrote four or five songs. I'm not sure which ones will make it on her album. But I have a good feeling about it."
She said she is amazed how long this season's shooting schedule is. In the first couple of years, the show shot maybe three months tops. This season is now entering its seventh month of shooting. (It's set to debut later this fall.)
In the wake of the suicide of Russell Armstrong on "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills," I asked her how she felt the TV network dealt with the death of fiance A.J. Jewell two years ago. "That's hard to say," she said. "When A.J. passed, it was right before we were supposed to tape the reunion show. They did postpone it. They didn't cancel it altogether. They're a business. Life goes on. The sad part is, everyone will be there for you when things happen right then and there. Months later, years later, you're still dealing with it while others are on to the next thing."
So how is she doing two years after his death? "I'm doing fine. Of course, there's a lot of things personally I'm dealing with but nothing I want to discuss with anybody." On her show, "we reveal a lot. But not everything."
I was able to get video of her public intro to the line at the party. She kept the language clean because she's classy like that:
The only celebrity I recognized was Derek J, the hairdresser who stars in the Oxygen reality show "Hair Battle Spectacular."
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By Rodney Ho, rho@ajc.com, AJCRadioTV blog
