Don't Get Put on the Next-List Snitch!

MORA KIMORA

As if she weren't busy enough plugging her new book "Fabulosity," Baby Phat entrepreneur Kimora Lee Simmons has also had to defend herself against recent rumors that her marriage to Def Jam co-founder Russell Simmons was more business-related than personal, and that the two are headed for divorce. In this month's Vibe Vixen cover story, Simmons denies that her marriage is one of convenience. She says:

"One thing my marriage is not is convenient. I am inconvenienced as shit! Russell and I have been together 14 years. That's a long time - almost half my life."

Simmons says she and her man have had their share of drama, but the tiffs are not unlike those of any other married couple.

"The things we go through are very regular things that regular people in Middle America go through, but because of my lifestyle or the logistics of it all, it's probably magnified those things. But they are the same problems and the same situations. Folks in Kenosha, Wis., may not have exactly the same issues. Take that time Russell slapped her picture on a Phat Farm T-shirt without her permission. "He didn't pay me, which is totally illegal, that's like putting a print of Beyonce on my shirt - she would sue the s- out of me! But I never did sue him. See, that's one of the things about being married. "

"I think he probably feels that he's paid me in so many other ways, and I feel like that's true."

Kimora's rep yesterday denied the couple was headed for divorce, even though career demands often keep them apart. A friend of the couple admitted that, even though Kimora is often seen with an entourage of girlfriends, "in private, she and Russell are very much in love."

The Baby Phat mogul also believes she's been given a bad rap for freely flaunting her extravagant lifestyle. She says:

"Look, Queen Elizabeth has more diamonds than me. Why don't people attack her for it? While they were telling NBA players to take off their medallions for game days, why don't they tell the Pope not to wear his medallion to work?"