She’s the 22-year old heiress of the Lamborghini fortune. She’s known to her 1.4 million Instagram followers for her 42 piercings, with 15 floating diamonds studded all over her body. If you ask her to define herself in one word, she points to a neck tattoo, one of many on her body that reads “Salvaje:” Spanish for wild.
She’s known alternatively as the Italian Paris Hilton, for promoting a lavish lifestyle in the age of Internet fame, and the “Italian Killer,” for not backing down if someone rubs her the wrong way. And after appearing on MTV’s Super Shore (a pumped-up Latin Jersey Shore) for three seasons now, Elettra Lamborghini has also earned the nickname “microwave,” a tease for being super warm around men before unexpectedly cooling down.
While Lamborghini has a huge fan base across Southern Europe and Latin America, as a result of the show, she dreams of breaking into the American market, through, of course, music.
And on a recent trip to Miami, she saw that her fame has already begun to spread stateside. “When I went to Miami I thought, ‘oh I can go in a bikini to the beach.’ No. There were a lot of people following me shouting, ‘Oh Elettra, Elettra.’ I was surprised,” she says.
Lamborghini’s trip to Miami in May was a business trip of sorts. She was introduced to producer and label executive Birdman through one of her father’s employees. Perhaps seeing in her the next Paris Hilton, for whom he produced two albums, Birdman (a.k.a. Bryan Christopher Williams) signed Lamborghini to his Cash Money Records label. He teased the meeting in an Instagram photo, which Lamborghini reposted before he later deleted it.
Lamborghini seems to be aware that a lot of her sex appeal is inherent in her name.
“I know my surname is one of the most important names. In the world there are a lot of people that have important surnames, but mine is completely unique,” she says of her famous last name. “It’s known worldwide. Everybody knows the Lamborghini name,” she says.
“It means luxury, speed, and money, lots of money. In America, all the best rappers have at least one Lamborghini. Every time I go to America, I feel like I’m at home because it’s like everybody has a Lamborghini.”
She notes that in Italy she doesn’t drive a Lamborghini everyday because people often judge her. “In Italy with the crisis, people are a bit jealous. I respect this.” With her father’s garage full of classic cars, she has her share to choose from every day.
And despite her party-girl image on Super Shore, she hasn’t drank alcohol or smoked a cigarette in six years.
“If I go to a nightclub and get tired, I prefer to drink water. And I don’t need it because I prefer to know what I’m doing, all the time,” she says. “I see a lot of people who are stupid when they drink but I don’t mind.”
While she is still figuring out how to brand herself, one thing she says she’s proud of is being a positive body image example for young girls.
“I think in Italy I’m the only person who eats everything. In Italy, especially in Milan, the capital of fashion, there are a lot of anorexic girls,” she says. “This is not my type of girl. I always put in my Instagram photos of me eating, saying you have to eat.”
“On the Internet you see a lot of things that are not true, a lot of Photoshop, a lot of filters, so you have to stay in reality. I’m a proud curvy girl and I want to portray this image,” she says. “I want people to know that Instagram, and its filters, and all these other platforms are not real. You have to eat and have chocolate and enjoy life. “
Lamborghini is already working on songs with Birdman, but is on hiatus for a month to film Super Shore 3 in Rimini. After the season wraps she plans on moving to Miami to pursue her dream full-time. She claims “important people” are already knocking on her door to collaborate, such as one of Justin Bieber’s producers.
She will sing in Spanish and in English, but admits she wants to be big in both worlds. “I really like reggaeton, trap, music, hip-hop. It will be a mix of everything,” she says about the album. “I hate auto-tune. I will never use it. I want people to hear my real voice.”
Her ideal music collaboration would be with Nicki Minaj, also on Cash Money, or Reykon. And potentially she could do something with her celebrity crush, Colombia singer Maluma, whom she has chatted with on WhatsApp.
“I want to be the first Italian girl in America singing in Spanish. I’m a remix. I’m an Italian who likes reggaeton and trap music. I feel like I look like a doll, but beneath this I’m rap. When you think about rap you imagine, ‘Yo, yo, yo,” but this is me,” she says. “I want to show the part of me that I’m so lovely, but I have a lot of character beneath this.”
