At the early age of 9, Carmen Electra (real name Tara Patrick) began her climb to super-stardom when she was chosen for the School for Creative and Performing Arts. She began taking singing lessons and by her teenage years, she was choreographing and performing musicals for the school's theatrical ensemble. She also began rapping and said her goal was "to go to Los Angeles and get a record deal."

In 1987, at the age of 15, Tara moved to Minneapolis, where her sister and half-sister lived. To earn money, she did some modelling for Target department stores. She was also known to be in Minneapolis during the 1990 filming of Prince's movie, Graffiti Bridge. In 1991, Tara moved to Los Angeles, California, changed her name to Carmen Electra, and in less than a week, met Prince.

"I'd been there a week when I went to this club called Spice, where I was approached by a woman who said she had this all-girl band that Prince was producing, and I had the look they were after. But what was really funny was that there was a Prince lookalike at the club that night, and I thought she might have been talking about him and it was all a joke."

In 1992, soon after meeting and auditioning for Prince, she was signed to his Paisley Park Records label. Prince took Carmen under his wing, describing her as "this new girl out of Cincinnati." She was promoted with ads in Rolling Stone and on MTV. However large the hype, the success wasn't there.

After posing nude for Playboy in May of 1996, Carmen's career was revived on October 4, 1996 when it was announced that she would take over from Jenny McCarthy (also a Playboy veteran) as Chris Hardwick's co-host on MTV's dating show Singled Out starting February 10, 1997, for at least 65 episodes.