Everyone talks about the good ol\u2019 days of the music and publishing industries; however, you must be a bit more specific when you state the time frame. Depending on your age, you could be speaking of the rowdy 70\u2019s, the roaring 80\u2019s, or, like Amy Dubois Barnett does, with a deep dive into the late 90\u2019s and early 2000\u2019s with her first novel, If I Ruled The World.<\/p>\n
Following the life of a fictional New York City-based female magazine editor, named Nikki Rose, it\u2019s not exactly a stretch for Dubois Barnett in real life, as she drew inspiration from her own career as a legendary magazine Editor-In-Chief of multiple major publishing titles like Teen Vogue and Honey. Later venturing into other legacy brands like Ebony and Jet, Dubois Barnett developed the idea for this project while running those content castles, starting the book in the early 2000s, then taking a break from writing it \u2019cause life be life\u2019n. Now, decades into her creative career and after stints in the TV world, she dusted off the manuscript and plowed through to complete her passion project.<\/p>\n
VIBE has an exclusive excerpt from the book (published by Flatiron Books), which was recently scooped up by Hulu and will be produced as a TV series with the well-decorated Lee Daniels (executive producer of Fox\u2019s Empire), with Barnett on the production team. Get into this golden era tale by getting the book here<\/a>, and ride the wave of excitement with Nikki Rose below:<\/p>\n I knew for certain that my life had truly changed. Hades was designed to look like, well, hell. The jaded New York City clubbers\u2019 version, of course. Flames shot up the blood-red walls, torture instruments hung from the ceiling, and women in red leather dominatrix outfits danced in suspended cages. There were also seven different rooms representing the seven deadly sins. <\/p>\n Walking past the lust room, I caught sight of what looked like a tangle of human flesh writhing on the dance floor and on every available sofa. As I grabbed a glass of champagne from a waitress who wore only a red bra, boy shorts, and thigh-high boots, I sure hoped God had a sense of humor.<\/p>\n The red sea of hard-partying celebs was also like nothing I\u2019d ever seen. Every time I turned, another celebrity would come into view: Usher, Will Smith, at least two of the Spice Girls, Nelly, Aaliyah, Lenny Kravitz, Lil\u2019 Kim, Justin Timberlake. Not one person had defied MC RedHot\u2019s strict dress code.<\/p>\n Barbara proceeded to introduce me to enough music label executives, celebrities, and well-lubricated party people to fill the celebrity.land\u2019s Page Six for years. I had met a few famous people at StyleList, but this was a different crowd, more Vibe and Village Voice than Vogue and The New York Times. After a couple hours, my head was spinning from all the famous and infamous hands I\u2019d shaken and cheeks I\u2019d air-kissed\u2014 as well as the champagne I\u2019d been nervously drinking like it was Perrier.<\/p>\n Desperate for a break, I found a cerise leather sectional sofa in a corner and perched on the edge. Taking another glass of champagne, I was about to get comfy and people-watch for a while when I heard a shrill voice behind me.<\/p>\n \u201cExcuse me. Excuse me.\u201d The earsplitting voice carried over the loud music.<\/p>\n I turned to see where the yelling was coming from and was confronted by a svelte woman with long jet-black hair, toasted-almond skin, and gray eyes. From a distance, she was beautiful, but as she leaned over to me from where she was seated on the other side of the sofa, I could see her hooded eyelids, the brown lip liner sloppily drawn to make her lips look fuller, the tracks of her weave.<\/p>\n \u201cAre you talking to me?\u201d I asked, not sure what to make of the tone of her voice. She turned to her friends, seated around her like ladies-in-waiting, all tall, striking women in identical tight dresses, and smirked.<\/p>\n \u201cAm I talking to her? This bitch don\u2019t even know,\u201d she said. They all laughed. Through the clamor, I thought I recognized a voice. On the sofa\u2019s far arm perched Luna, wearing a low-cut red catsuit.<\/p>\n \u201cTell her, Serena,\u201d Luna egged the tall woman on.<\/p>\n \u201cDid we invite you to sit here?\u201d Serena wiggled her neck at me, her face inches from mine.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t realize I needed to be invited to sit on a sofa in a club,\u201d I said defiantly. The women all cackled in unison. Serena calmly looked me up and down. \u201cBitch, this is a reserved area. Puff Daddy\u201d \u2014 she practically genuflected when she uttered his name \u2014 \u201cis on his way over here, and he don\u2019t want to see your sorry ass up in his private VIP, exclusive, reserved section.\u201d<\/p>\n As Luna and her model crew laughed, I debated whether to mock the absurd redundancy of that sentence and stand my ground or roll my eyes and confidently flounce off. Opting not to be at the center of a bar fight at my first Red Party, I stood to leave. When I felt another hand on my arm, I assumed it was Barbara wanting me to meet some more people, but I turned to see Kiara, looking amazing in a red Balmain dress with rubies in her ears.<\/p>\n Kiara hugged me hard, then twirled me around to check out my outfit. \u201cFabulous, love! Next time, let\u2019s go shopping together. Maybe we can score some showroom freebies.\u201d Then she looked past me to survey the scene on the sofa. \u201cAnd what do we have here?\u201d It was clear that Kiara and Serena were not exactly girls.<\/p>\n \u201cI was just leaving. Apparently, Puff Daddy is on his way over, and I\u2019m not invited to sit on his special, VIP, exclusive, reserved, private sofa,\u201d I told her, emphasizing every word. Kiara started to laugh \u2014 clearly at Serena, Luna, and their ridiculous pronouncement. \u201cWell, love, I\u2019ll tell you what. Let\u2019s head on over to my reserved banquette.\u201d She motioned with her chin at the most crowded area of the room. Photographers were going crazy, trying to shoot whoever was sitting behind the crush of onlookers. \u201cPuff is already hanging over there, along with Paris, Usher, and Gisele. Oh, and you can leave your champagne glass here. I\u2019ve got bottles of Cristal coming all night.\u201d<\/p>\n More from VIBE.com<\/strong><\/p>\n Best of VIBE.com<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Vibe’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Everyone talks about the good ol\u2019 days of the music and publishing industries; however, you must be a bit more specific when you state the time frame. Depending on your age, you could be speaking of the rowdy 70\u2019s, the roaring 80\u2019s, or, like Amy Dubois Barnett does, with a deep dive into the late […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2268734,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[439295,439297,439299,439296,439298],"class_list":["post-2268733","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-amy-dubois-barnett","tag-dubois-barnett","tag-lee-daniels","tag-nikki-rose","tag-publishing-industries"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Amy-DuBois-Barnett-Former-Teen-Vogue-And-Honey-Mag-EIC.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268733","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268733"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268733\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2268735,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268733\/revisions\/2268735"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2268734"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268733"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268733"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268733"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/span><\/div>\n
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