Jeffree Star

“I told her I didn’t know how, and a month later when she was finished recording an album, she brought me a few beats.”

That was enough to inspire him. He began writing “really crazy lyrics” to rap beats — he’s obsessed with hip-hop.

“I wrote a crazy rap song called ‘We Want Cunt,’” he says. ”Cunt was my nickname online — that was how I generated a lot of attention back in the day.”

He asked Tom on MySpace to convert his page to a music page, allowing him to keep all his friends. “[The song] really caught on, so I made another, and it became way bigger than I ever thought,” he says. “It’s not really great music like Madonna, but it kind of fits the whole package.”

He eventually got a manager who spotted him at the airport in full makeup and high heels. Now he has four songs on his MySpace page and, “as of yesterday,” he tells me, “I have over 22 million [song plays].”

We walk into Star’s command central, his roommate’s bedroom, where he manages all his traffic. On one computer screen, a little pop-up window is waiting for him, asking if he wants to add more friends to his My Space page. He clicks “accept,” and we watch as 20, 40, 90, 200 and counting, friends are added. All in one day?

“Oh, girl, I updated this at 5 a.m., so this is just from the last four or five hours.” On the other computer, we try to log on to MySpace, but the site is down.

“Oh, God! I’m gonna have a nervous breakdown,” says Star, frantically trying to reboot. “This is like my 9-to-5 job.” He finally lets it go with a sigh and shows me his Buzznet page, where you can watch his video blogs and see pictures from yesterday’s photo shoot, where he was made into a pink-haired Barbie Doll for jewelry designer Tarina Tarantino, who chose Star as her company spokesmodel (he was also chosen to represent fashion maven Jared Gold’s new line).

Star also has a deal through BandMerch.com, selling his T-shirts and panties to people all over the world, and he’s even scored a booking agent. His first gig was in Anchorage, Alaska, and now he plays all over the country.

“People in L.A. and New York, they’ve seen it all, and it’s not that fun. Places where they don’t have someone like me around, they go crazy.” Earlier this year, his song “Plastic Surgery Slumber Party” debuted at No. 1 on iTune’s dance charts,above Justin Timberlake, and this summer he’s touring with Cyndi Lauper.

With MySpace still down, we log on to his e-mail, and his inbox is flooded with fan mail.

“You know,” he says, “to be honest, the best part of this whole thing is getting e-mails from people who say I inspire them and help them in some way.”

Underneath all that makeup, Jeffree Star does have a heart — he just doesn’t want you to know it.