DID YA'LL SEE "LOVE & HIP HOP" WTF!

Based on tonight's first episode of VH1's new reality show "Love & Hip Hop," they could just as easily have used the title "What's love got to do with it?"
We've had plenty of reality shows about sports and entertainment in urban America, and nothing here presents any startling new perspectives on that lavish and often fragile world.

By focusing exclusively on five women who live in that world, though, "Love & Hip Hop" has an intensity you don't always feel with, say, the sports wives on the "Real Housewives" series.

It also has a pervasive air of sadness. While all these women to outside eyes have made it into the upper circle of a privileged world, none has what she really wants.

In one early scene, Olivia Longott, Chrissy Lampkin and Mashonda Tifrere are reclining by the pool of an obviously lavish home, talking about how it doesn't get any better than this - hanging with your girlfriends, sipping Cristal, watching a nice piece of eye candy paddling around in the pool.

But Olivia, who dates the Jets' Darrelle Revis, is scrambling to revitalize a hip-hop career that seems to have lost traction.

Chrissy, after six years with hip-hop star Jim Jones, mentions a little too often that she isn't sure their status quo will keep her happy forever.

Six years, she says, with no kids, no ring, nothing that gives her any kind of grip on tomorrow.

She isn't just an ornament, she tells us. She's a designer and stylist. She's important in Jones' life. But without some official recognition of that status, she's just one hot new girl away from being yesterday's news.

So when Latina rapper Somaya (Boss) Reece comes in from the West Coast and takes a meeting with Jones, Chrissy instantly feels the need to chop Somaya off at the knees.

It makes for good TV drama. It doesn't look like a very secure way to live.

When Chrissy and Somaya cross paths at a party, they quickly trade daggers. Somaya later reflects on the exchange by saying, in a mocking tone, "So what do you do? What's your title? 'Girlfriend'?"

Things aren't much better for New York-born Emily Bustamante, who for the last decade has been the stylist and low-profile girlfriend of rapper Fabolous.

They have two children, but she and they don't appear with him in public. No parties, no red carpets. Wouldn't be good for Fabolous' image.

Emily has her own career as a stylist. But what she really wants is respect and acknowledgement from Fabolous.


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