Update! Watch The Latest Clip Included In Your Kim Kardashian Sex Tape History Lesson

In 2002, the mention of Kim Kardashian’s name didn’t trigger annoyance in one half of America’s population and wasn’t worshiped by the other half. Believe it or not, folks had no idea who Kim K was back then.

In the early 2000's, Kardashian was still a no-name. The only thing that was known to the public at the time was that she was the stepdaughter of Olympic gold medal winner Bruce Jenner and one of the daughters of the late lawyer Robert Kardashian, who famously represented O.J. Simpson in one of the most iconic murder trials in U.S. history.

Back then, Kardashian was the personal stylist to singer Brandy Norwood, and famously/infamously dated her brother, Willie Ray J Norwood, whose only claim to fame was being Brandy’s younger bro.

Ray J whisked his then-GF Kardashian off to the luxury Esperanza resort in Cabo, Mexico, to celebrate her 23rd birthday. The R&B singer was 21 at the time. The couple was so excited about the trip that they even used a handheld camcorder to film everything… literally everything.

Little did they know that the footage that captured them having sex in all ways imaginable would one day leak online, would be watched more than 210 million times and turn them into the highest-selling “pornstars” of all time.

In the early 2000s, Pornhub’s-number-one-“pornstar”-to-be was pretty desperate for attention, as revealed by Kevin Dickinson, a former editor at In Touch Weekly. Dickinson spoke to Page Six in 2017 and pulled the curtain back a bit more on Kim’s life prior to becoming the pop culture icon and modern-era influencer. The former editor claimed that Kim K would give him stories about herself every week, plant stories about herself in the tabloids, and tip off paparazzi about her whereabouts.

The reality-star-to-be struggled to get her name out there, and Dickinson argued that it was “really hard” for editors to get her coverage. Editors even “tried to get her to f*ck Nick Lachey” so she could at least reach the level of a celebrity girlfriend. Given the media’s interest in the singer’s love life, dating Lachey would help get people to talk about Kardashian.

But Kim K couldn’t pull it off, as Dickinson said Lachey had never been interested in dating Kardashian, which, if you compare the popularity of Lachey and Kardashian in the modern pop culture world, is hilarious. However, Kardashian’s lawyer, Marty Singer, vehemently denied Dickinson’s claims and told the publication that his client had never planted stories about herself nor did she alert the paparazzi about her whereabouts.

Kardashian’s popularity was growing at a modest rate thanks to her small number of public appearances alongside Paris Hilton, the Hilton hotel heiress with an estimated net worth of over $100 million. Kim K and Hilton, the second most iconic blonde of all time (after Marilyn Monroe), had been BFFs since childhood, so the tremendous media coverage that Hilton was receiving in the mid-2000s helped Kardashian appear in the news every now and then. Believe it or not, this was Kim K’s biggest leap into the spotlight at the time.

Hilton’s road to stratospheric global fame was actually eerily similar to Kim’s. The Hilton hotel heiress filmed a homemade sex tape with ex-boyfriend Rick Salomon, and the X-rated footage saw the light of day in 2004. Before Kim Kardashian’s sex tape in the mid-2000s, the blonde socialite’s porn vid—released as 1 Night in Paris—was on everyone’s minds (and computers, buried deep in the “study project” folder, because, well, nobody opens those, ever).

If you’re wondering how phenomenally successful Hilton’s sex tape was, even Donald Trump watched it. In a 2010 interview with Howard Stern, the then-television personality admitted to watching the sex tape with his then girlfriend, future wife and First Lady, Melania. The infamous interview resurfaced in 2015, shortly after the real estate mogul announced he was running for president.

Back to Kardashian…Kim K was still lurking in the shadow of her world-famous BFF at the time when the entertainment world was obsessed with Hilton and Lindsay Lohan.

Kardashian’s name went viral after Vivid Entertainment illegally distributed the 41-minute movie of Kardashian and Ray J having sex and Kim performing oral sex on her then-boyfriend. The truth may be hard to swallow, but it was the moment when the reality-star-to-be finally rose to fame and has been growing her popularity ever since.

The raunchy video went on to become a huge hit, with the tabloids speculating who was responsible for the sex tape leak, and the leading entertainment publications focusing on Kim K’s ensuing legal battle with Vivid, which released the exclusive footage under the title of Kim Kardashian, Superstar.

Before filing a lawsuit, Kardashian had initially said that the person getting naughty with Ray J in the X-rated video wasn’t her. The rumor mill was churning that there was a scene featuring “water sports,” which, for those living in the cave (or simply not into the kinky stuff), refers to peeing on your sex partner.

Given that Kim K knew for a fact that she had never performed the act of pissing on her partner and no one ever urinated on her during foreplay, it makes sense that the reality star refused to believe that she was the person in the sex tape.

Once Kardashian learned that someone actually leaked the footage of her having sex during her trip to Mexico, she attempted to prevent it from going viral. But this is the Internet, and even in the mid-2000s, scandals and nude content spread like wildfire.

Although Steven Hirsh, the founder and co-chairman of Vivid, insisted in his interview with Page Six that it “definitely wasn’t” Kim or her representatives who leaked the raunchy tape to the porn studio, there are many skeptics who still believe that the company would never release a sex tape without having the signatures of the people in the video.

“Kim was not involved in it leaking the tape,” Hirsh told the publication. “It was that these people had the footage and were looking to sell it.” The founder of Vivid noted, however, that the “person” who brought the exclusive footage came fully prepared. “They came in with this big, like, rolling suitcase and they unpacked all of it. It was a production.”

On February 21, 2007, Kardashian’s lawyer, Steven Kurtz, filed a lawsuit against Vivid in order to prevent the company from distributing the sex tape.

Exactly a month later, on March 21, 2007, despite the ongoing legal battle in Los Angeles, the porn distributor released the sex tape.

Kardashian and her legal team finally settled the suit with Vivid. As a result of the multi-million dollar deal, Kim K sold the footage to Vivid. According to reports, Kim Kardashian was paid from $4.5 million to $5 million to allow the porn company to distribute the footage online. However, Kim’s lawyer, Singer, later denied the reports, claiming that the figure is “greatly inflated.”

In the first few years since the release of  Kardashian, Superstar, the reality star was facing backlash over the sex tape. But as time went by, reporters, journalists and paparazzi shifted their focus away from the scandalous video—the creation of Kim that brought her enormous fame—and started paying attention to the reality star’s personal life and business ventures, ultimately turning her into a TV icon.

In other words, you can’t make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.

E! started giving little-to-no attention to Hilton. Instead, the network—and the rest of the entertainment world for that matter—were obsessing over Kardashian and her family. Needless to say, Kim’s growing fame translated into the downfall of the friendship between Kardashian and Hilton.

Many believe that Hilton, who was the first celeb to jump on the do-porn-to-get-famous train, taught Kardashian how to pull off the stunt with the leaked sex tape. Little did she know that the student can become the master. You mess with the bull, you get the horns.

In August of 2007, MTV cancelled <em>The Simple Life</em>, the second creation of Hilton (after the homemade porn video) that turned her into the biggest TV personality of the mid-2000s. This was a true sucker punch to Hilton’s gut.

Apparently, raking in millions of dollars every year for distributing the Kim Kardashian sex tape wasn’t enough for Vivid, which is why the pornography studio released a 3D virtual reality porn featuring a Kardashian lookalike.

Released in October 2016, viewers had to pay nearly $120 a year to gain access to Vivid’s platform and watch the VR vid titled Kim Kardashian Superstar VR Experience. The immersive, hi-tech version of the infamous sex film lets helmet-wearing viewers join in with the action, and, umm, get intimate with the Kim K doppelganger.

The raunchy experience begins with actual footage from the tape originally recorded in 2002. As the viewer sits on a bed watching the Kim K sex tape on a screen in a physical room, the lookalike enters the frame and begins to interact with the viewer.

“Hi there, I like your room,” says the actress who bears an eerie resemblance to Kim K. “I know you bought the video because you wanna see me. Why don’t we just play here?” And that’s where the viewer gets to put the virtual reality experience to the test.

Right before the viewer’s eyes, the Kim Kardashian doppelganger begins to pleasure herself with a sex toy. When the VR “foreplay” is over, that’s where the NSFW action really begins, and the actress performs sex acts on the viewer.

The immersive VR porn, which is available on Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, Google Cardboard, and iOS, has roughly 20 minutes of X-rated content. It’s unclear whether Kardashian approved the released of the VR sex video or if it violates the agreement Kim K signed with Vivid Entertainment.

For Ray J, the ship of fame sailed away in the opposite direction. Even though the R&amp;B singer still reportedly earns around $360,000 per year in royalties for the infamous tape, the 2007 scandal has had little to no impact on his music career.

After Ray J failed to get the piece of fame pie in the music world, the singer attempted to follow in Kim’s footsteps in the world of television, and competed in British reality TV show, Celebrity Big Brother. The singer finished in last place, had to rush to hospital for emergency dental work, and then wasn’t even allowed to return into the Celebrity Big Brother house. Ouch!

In 2013, shortly after his ex-lover started dating Kanye West, Ray J released a song in which he is believed to be dissing the “Famous” rapper and appears to be singing about his sexual intercourse with Kim K. “I had her head going north and her ass going south, but now baby chose to go West,” the lyrics read.

In his interview with Heat magazine in January 2017, the singer got candid about the sex tape leak and hinted that his ex-girlfriend's mother, Kris Jenner, was behind the leak.

Calling the momager “a real hustler,” Ray J said he only did his “part” in making Kardashian famous, adding that “if you’re intelligent you can read between the lines.”

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