Bandsplain - Lil' Kim with Clover Hope

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Lil' Kim set the blueprint for much of female rap today but her legacy is so often misunderstood. With author Clover Hope, we unpack her history, her body of work, her influence, and how she walked so WAP could slide. Follow Clover Hope on Twitter @clovito and find her book The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop wherever books are sold. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What's with this band anyway? I don't get it. Can you please explain? Wait, like, Bansplaine? Welcome to Bansplane. I'm your host, Yossi Salick. This is a show where brilliant experts explain cult bands and iconic artists to me and to you using their big brains, their big hearts, and some big, big songs. Today's episode is about the Queen Bee, aka Kimmy Blanc, A.K.A.A. the notorious K-I.M. A.k.a.a. Lil' Kim. If you don't know what Lil' Kim sounds like, your

life has been very sad. Here is what Lil' Kim sounds like. This first goes out to my in jail. Beating their dicks to the double-exel. A-huh magazine. Like how I look in the aqua green. Get your vasin'em. My guest today is journalist and author Clover Hope. She's currently a contributing editor at Pitchfork and an adjunct professor at NYU. She's smart. Her first book, The Mother Lode, 100 plus women who made hip hop,

is out now at fine booksellers everywhere. Welcome to Bandsblan Clover. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited that you're here and for us to have a big Lil'Kim day. Yes, yes, Kimi Blanco. Kimi Blanco. I think because I'm 38,

I just have like an osmosis of Lil'Kim without ever maybe having done any deep diving. So that's why I'm really excited. I think people of a certain age, we grew up hearing Lil Kim songs. It's part of the cultural DNA, especially of the 90s. But I think there's so much more to her as an artist that I don't know about and maybe my listeners don't know about.

So I'm super excited to get into it with you. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. And same with me for the process of writing the book. I was discovering so much about the artist I grew up on. So Kim was one of them. Do you want to give me just like an overview of like, who is Lil Kim? So you probably know Lil Kim as the rapper behind songs like Crush on You or her verse on

it's All About the Benjamins with Puffy. Very likely, you know, as the rapper who wore a mermaid pasty on her titty at the VMAs, I think. But yes, she is much more than that. She's a rapper from Brooklyn, got her start with Notorious Beard. Biggie met her one day on Fulton Street, took her under his wings, and she became part of this clique called Junior Mafia. I think the defining quality about Kim is that she did end up kind of falling into this real interesting and challenging critical space where she was owning her sexuality and also being pushed into this particular image and spotlight by the men who were behind her and control. controlling her image. So, you know, she introduced this whole sexual revolution in rap and hip hop in the 90s. I mean, to illustrate that really like the first song on her album, the first full song

starts off very clearly with setting an intention of what kind of artist Lil Kim is. I will say that Diana Ross, fiddling Lil Kim's titty with the pasty on it, lives in my head rent-free since then. iconic moment. Yeah. I think it was the VMAs. Well, you've set it up perfectly. Should we get into that song that you just referenced? Yeah, let's go into Big Mama thing. You're listening to a music and talk episode. What's that? It's where full songs and talk segments can live together in gorgeous harmony, only on Spotify. Do you dream of making your own music and talk show? Well, guess what? You two can create one for free with Anchor, Spotify's podcasting platform. Get started. today at anchor.fm slash music and talk. That's anchor.com slash music and talk. Okay, so that was

Big Mama Thing, excuse me, Big Mama Thang off hardcore, which was Lil Kim's first album. First of all, L.O.L. New York to Anaheim, I don't think I'd ever clock that before and just like really brought me joy. I was like, wow, it worked in the rhyme scheme. However, it does show how maybe the East Coast, West Coast understanding was a little weak because Anaheim is, you know, Disneyland. It's a fine place. Clover, I have a question. So when this album comes out, it's like 1996, right? The landscape of prior female rappers, like, even just like off the top of my head, right? It's like Queen Latifah, MC Light had come out, like years prior. I mean, even way before that, JJ Fad, there's a host of others. But like...

Salt and Pepper. Yeah, salt and pepper, exactly. You know, there were other, you know, female rappers in the lineage, but the vibe was not this vibe. Am I correct? And like the sexuality, the raunchiness, like that was kind of, you know, that was kind of uniquely Lil' Kim. For sure. Lil Kim came out the gate swinging basically with this album. With her look, she was dressing sexy.

She was wearing bras on stage, performing with her crew. She was pretty, like, audacious. And there, we had. I didn't see any rapper like that before, not just in the way she sounded where she was lyrically adept and then just in terms of for men, like visually kind of like appealing. And, you know, like she, she wore provocative wear as much as she rap provocatively. There's a way this track sets up her origin story in a way. Like, you know, even the line. She used to be afraid of the dick.

Well, that, so I used to be afraid, I used to be scared of the dick, now I throw lips to the shit. Like, that line alone is like a coming of age story. Like, that is, you know. Whomst can relate is what I'm saying. Whomst amongst us? Who cannot relate to being, you know, like easing into this, you know, particular portion of your life that will never end, which is like expressing your sexuality. And so, yeah, and also, you know, telling how she kind of a little bit of her rise, like big scooped a young bitch off her knees.

And just that one line kind of, you know, Biggie discovered me and kind of like, you know, tells a whole story about how a lot of women in rap had to come up under a male rapper and had to kind of get that co-sign. And Kim got that biggie co-sign and, you know, kind of took it and ran with it. another thing about that song is just how much she is like an advocate of conalinguish. She is like the queen bee of that as well of being like you are going to sit there or whatever stand there and you know she's like

tell me what's on your mind when you're tongues in the pussy. I mean we owe her a lot. Yeah, yeah. She gave us those anthems and like those lines that are just like assertive you know she came out the gate with this power. But at the same time, it was like, you, like, people knew that Biggie was writing some of her lyrics and that she had these guys who were sort of helping to define, like, what type of artist she would be, that she was sort of the mistress of rap. And so that's what makes her a really interesting and just kind of challenging subject to talk about or to just consider in terms of her place in rap. She's the reason that like a wop can even exist.

And if people think wop is crazy, like those lyrics, you know, like listen to this song. Ben Shapiro could never listen to this music. He would have an aneurysm. Yeah, his brain would fall out. His brain would, what little of it is left would fall out. Okay, I want to ask one question and then I'd love for you to like kind of get more granular into like her origin story. But how was this kind of, you know, back to the fact that the landscape was like, again, like the Queen Latifas and MC Lights of the World, like, and even salt and pepper.

You know, they were like advocating safe sex and stuff, but it was a very different type of rapping about sex at all. How was it received? So it was kind of two-sided where people, you know, women, young girls embrace that there was this, you know, like young rapper who looked like us. I was maybe 13, 14, 13 to 16 kind of when Kim started, you know, rising. And I think we looked at it as, oh, this is a, like, this is a young woman in rap who is expressing herself and how much she feels comfortable being sexy and she is expressing her sexuality. She's a black woman doing it very publicly.

And that is something that a lot of times it's, you know, looked at as a shameful thing for, like, black women to just be talking about sex, which is why, you know, the WOP response brings up so many issues. So Kim, it's not like she had a, you know, the Golden Gates open, I guess. There were articles about like, is Kim, you know, is she too provocative or like, is this what we need in rap? Or, you know, is this how we want women to be seen? And, you know, so it opened the floodgates for criticism about how women show their bodies in rap. And then it becomes this thing where she's not even, she's like more of the objects of the story. and I guess agency gets a little bit taken away when it's like, she's just kind of like a vessel to talk about these bigger issues, you know?

Can you tell me a little more about like the making of Lil Kim? So she meets Biggie, which I think it's pretty well known at this point that the relationship between them was kind of complicated. And she's shaped or formed into this artist. But like who was she before she met Biggie? Kim, she had a sort of torture childhood where she was moving around a lot. She didn't have a great relationship with her dad. She has talked about this and, you know, she would get into fights. And there was a sense of that there was protection, but then, you know, like a fear, like in terms of her relationship with her father.

So like there was one time when I think she pulled like a pair of scissors out on him. And again, she has talked about this. So she didn't have the, like, kind of cookie cutter childhood. And so she came into the game pretty young. She was still a teenager. If you think about just how young she was, probably what, 17 around that time, getting into rap and kind of at the same time that she's discovering her sexuality and kind of discovering herself, her identity.

Like, she also has to present that identity to the world. and that can be like it's a weird place to be as, you know, like just a young girl trying to make music. So she and Foxy Brown actually released their albums during the same month. And what we saw with both of those artists was this introduction of image as something that labels started to think about as something to be constructed. It was like you have to sell a sexy image. You have to sell sex. And compared to maybe the Klinifah, MC Life, saw on Peppa. Right.

Like that era of women before Kim, that wasn't something that was like pushed on them. It wasn't something that was like, you have to sell sex. And post Kim, though, that did become. That's like the standard. Yes, yeah. And so she really was a game changer for better and worse. You mentioned that, you know, it was well known that Biggie, you know, co-wrote or wrote some of her rhymes.

How much do you think that she co-authored just her image, though, or her, because I think even those rhymes are all in service of this, like, one singular image of, like, who is little Kim? Like, how much of that do you think was co-authored by Kim herself? It's hard to tell because when I spoke to execs who had worked on the album, A&R's, like the president of the label at the time, they said that. She wrote many of her lyrics in that, you know, they helped construct this image of her, even from the, you know, Biggie choosing that image of Kim squatting in a bikini. You know, that was the start of just like how people would see her.

And it became like this defining portrait of her, this defining shot of Kim that other artists have replicated. Like Nikki Minaj did a, like a version of that photo. And but that was that was something that she did and she did the photo shoot and you know she kind of went along with it. Biggie was like, I want to use this photo as the marketing and like promo shot. And she, you know, she was like okay. Like, you know, like it's hard to tell like where she was at that time like being so young and maybe not feeling like she had as much control as she could have or or feeling like she maybe had to kind of say yes to certain things. So it's, it's, I think like she has said that she. She, you know, she wanted to feel sexy.

Like, she wanted to show that, like, I'm sexy. I can be sexy. And she's talked about having insecurities in terms of not feeling beautiful. Right. So part of it was probably that she wanted to project this image of being glamorous and being sexy. And so that part is her, you know. But then it says it gets all mixed up when men are like, well, we want you to look this way. I'd love to hear another song.

Where do you want to take us next? in the Lil' Kim magical universe. Let's go with Crush on You, which is also from Hardcore. One thing that you'll clearly notice about that song is that Little Seas, who was a member of Junior Mafia, is all over that track. And that's because when they recorded Hardcore, when they were in the process of recording, Kim was in a dark place in terms of her relationship with Biggie. like she had gotten pregnant and she said that she had an abortion. So they got to, like they were almost done with the album and they needed her to do a verse for Crush on You and not a Verse to the song. And she couldn't finish it. And so they basically put that song on the album without Kim. So on the album, Kim is not on that song. And they had to re-record it with her. Yeah. That's crazy. Also, I need to point out that two things bring me straight back to being 12 years old. And it's the words, little C's and C-Breeze.

Because those terms lived in harmony in many songs during the 90s. Let's, yeah, let's get into her relationship with Biggie. Like, I know, again, it's all kind of hearsay. And I don't want to, like, focus too much on the relationship because that's not who she was as an artist. but I think because it's so tied in to how she formed as an artist, it's kind of important to look back on. Yeah, it's, I mean, people don't kind of even imagine Kim without thinking of Biggie.

Yeah. You know, he was so much in the shadow that when he died and when he passed away, she had to do a lot to kind of get out of that shadow and to kind of get away from while Biggie was writing her lyrics or, you know, now that he's gone, what are you going to do? And, you know, she had that pressure to just prove that she was a good rapper and that she was, she could kind of make it on her own and make songs and write without having him as the steward of her image. From the time they met, like they worked together and then it grew into a relationship. And it became, you know, just kind of part of this scandalous part of hip hop history because Biggie was, he was married.

Married to Faith. And yeah, so there was, you know, he was being treacherous. And, you know, Kim was kind of in this weird place of loving this man. And, you know, also having to deal with making an album with him. So there were tense moments in the studio and when they would have to record together. And for this album, in particular, hardcore, he's just so, he's just so tied to her backstory and her history. Yeah, I'm like really. in my feelings right now.

I'm just thinking of... I love this song. Like, I'm sorry. No, the song is amazing. And also, like, I think it's really easy in 2021 where, like, every Gen Z grew up, you know, with, like, seven waves of feminism, like, floating them to shore.

But, like, I got my first, like, job in journalism because an editor had a crush on me. You know, like, that was just reality for a long time, for a lot of women, in a lot of different career lanes where it wasn't like so black and white that you could just make your way, you know? We needed doors opened for us. And it's like the judgment and the kind of like stripping away of the talent and value of these women because of the means that they used to get where they are is like really disgusting. I was thinking, and this is like kind of a weird

parallel, but bear with me. When you were talking, I was thinking of Courtney Love also. I was like, you know, she had a similar situation where it was her husband, but like everyone said the same thing. Kurt writes her songs, you know, when she had to fight really hard after he died to prove that, no, I'm my own artist. Like, I put this stuff out. And the both of them, honestly, like, they suffer badly from the huge weight of the world's judgment and inability to like accept them as artists on their own. And it sucks and I'm mad. It's wild because there's a way in which both of those artists also help the guys that they were with. A hundred percent. And people aren't like, well, where would Biggie be without Kim? But we can ask that same question. He was obviously a genius

in his own right and like lyrically undeniable. But so much of his kind of bossness in a way and, you know, him having a crew was reliant on Kim being the woman in that crew and Kim being this kind of force that helped him look good and helped him look better. And so, you know, we have to also remember the other part of that is it was a mutual relationship. You know, like they helped each other. And it doesn't make Kim's legacy any less that she had helped from him in any way that it makes Biggie's legacy any less than, you know, that he had help from Kim too.

But I do think that there's this tendency to make it seem like the woman would be nowhere without the guy. You can make the argument that it's symbiotic, honestly. The mythology wouldn't exist. Symbiotic, yes. I have one more note about Crush on You. One thing to also remember about The Crush on You is the video. And this is the video that launched Kim as this multi-class,

color wigged, like Barbie. She had wigs from every color of the rainbow. And we see Nikki Minaj and like Megan the salient and we see the rap girls of today wearing these bright wigs and we kind of maybe don't think about Kim as like the predecessor all the time. But this video played such a big role in that imagery. You know, we weren't seeing like rap women in bright colored wigs, you know, like being playful and being glamorous in that way.

So that's something to kind of like remember. Oh my God, totally. This video is iconic. I mean, it also makes me think of Rihanna. Like, Rihanna would not be the fashion icon she is today. Like, she owes a lot to Lil Kim. I mean, the bitch better have my bunny video is like basically Lil Kim cosplay and it's awesome. Very, very good point. And I will after this be watching the video and perhaps ordering myself a few wigs off of the internet. Let's hear another song, Clover. Where do you want to take us next after this? Let's go to No Time featuring Puff Daddy, P-Ditty, Puffy, whatever you want to call him. That was No Time by Little Kim featuring Mr. Puff Daddy.

I'm drinking babies. I was just like always just marvel at that line on a song. I mean, it's so good. Yes, yeah. I think similar to like other songs, like the couple other songs. Like the couple other songs we play, this is also on hardcore and this is Kim, again, getting explicit in a way that was sort of, I mean, it was like narrating porn, basically. You know, like this isn't, you know, suggestive, like push it, but so on Peppa was like, you had to kind of read between. Yeah, and there's no innuendo here. She's just saying the words.

Yes, yes, exactly. It's like no pussy footing, literally. So, and then this is just a great duet with poppy. The song and the video, she's like going down this escalator. And you can hear just the swagger in her voice in these earlier records is really incredible. Like she just has this, I don't know, this mightiness. She's tiny. She's only like 4-11.

And she has this just volume and, yeah, like robustness in her voice. I'm so struck by that because she's like 21. You know, like I could barely get a sentence out without like a nervous laugh. And I'm so sorry, okay, bye, when I was 21. And, you know, she's just like unapologetic. Like she's just saying her things. To that point, at this time, would you say that little Kim was the kind of reigning, female rapper of the time?

Or what was like, because this is still first album. So had she already kind of taken that throne? I would say she definitely was maybe sort of owning it with Foxy Brown, but they were the top. She was definitely at the top of that totem pole, I think,

which was really not that many women, but Kim was the queen of mid-late 90s rap. Rap in general, I would also say. And then the major turning point was Biggie's death in 97. And so that changed her world.

And it also changed her career because her next album was four years later. Right. Which was notorious K-I-M. And why do you think it took so long? I mean, is it because Biggie passed away and there was just like grief and also maybe like recalibration of who am I,

if not like we talked about before, like in the mythology of Up Against Biggie? Right. I think there was some soul searching, identity searching. The label itself had to figure out what they were going to do and regroup because he was the flagship artist on Bad Boy and his own label. And so, you know, they had to kind of regroup. And Kim, I think, had to go through trauma. Like, this was a traumatic experience for her.

She was seen at the, like the funeral procession in Brooklyn. Like, she was crying. She was falling apart. She was bawling and, like, could not keep it together. Like, people didn't know, I think, the extent to which she was in love with him at that time. And so she felt like she lost a part of herself. And so I do think she had to go through that grief and, like, come out of it and say, like, you know, I'm still an artist. I'm my own artist.

And she did that with Notorious K-I-M. And it's funny because that title still has him in it, you know? Like, she's taking Biggie's name, like Notorious and kind of reclaiming. blaming somewhat of her identity in a way while still holding onto him. So it's a really, you know, interesting dynamic that happened. Should we hear a song off notorious K.M? Yes, let's hear no matter what they say. That was Kim.

I think trying to kind of prove herself. And this was a single, I think, where she had to, she had to prove that outside of Biggie, she could write, that she could make a song and that she could sell, basically. And I think all that pressure was on this album. And you can kind of hear it. I really love this song. I do think that there's so much luster in, like, her earlier records.

You can tell there's somewhat of a drop off with this song from the first album, Hardcore. But, you know, she's still the queen. And she's trying to say she's still the queen of rap. Totally. I think also I'm hearing, like, you know, it's more poppy for sure. But also, you know, I think maybe just this song has it so much that it struck me that maybe it wasn't so much in the first album. This is also peak materialism in hip hop. So like establishing herself as the queen also is like name checking everything from like Bulgari to Versace to Crystal like multiple times in this song.

That kind of also shows like I'm dominating in this industry because I have all the things. Well, she's glamorous, right? I think actually more so the late 90s, I would say, was the peak of materialism when, you know, Puffy had more money, more problems. And like Jay-Z and J.Z and Jermaine Dupree, like money and a thing. And like it was just really this era of affluence that was just coming to hip-hop. I go back to a stat from 1998, which is just that that year was the point when hip-hop crossed, like officially crossover. And it was the biggest genre in the world. And I think, like, Time Magazine did this cover that was, like, hip hop.

It was hip hop nation. And it solidified hip hop as, like, the dominant cultural force in music. And Kim was really at the center of that. And, you know, in between this first and second album, she kind of had to figure out where she fit in coming from this era of, you know, hip hop affluence and, you know, the shiny suit era, basically that Puffy engineered. in like this era that is the millennial pop era of Britney's fears and Christina and Justin and boy bands because that was 2000, 2001. And so this album came out in the middle of that. And this song has more of a, yeah, it's like a more upbeat kind of like less street flavor to it.

I'm really craving to hear the cunning linguish national anthem, which was also on this album. Can we hear it? Let's hear how many licks. Yeah. Okay. How many bar mitzvahs did I attend? Where the DJ is just blasting this song for a bunch of 13-year-olds to just get what? Freaky on the dance floor.

I was talking with producer Dylan about this earlier, who was a lot younger than me. But even when the first little album came out, I was like 12. And the amount of music that I was listening to just like jamming out to at 12 that I don't know, I didn't know what these people were talking about, you know, I was young. I was telling her earlier, like, I did a dance with my friends in middle school at the talent show to Uchi Walla Walla. Oh my God. And nobody said anything. And what? You know, and I think this song, this one was a straight up pop song at the time. I mean, it was on the radio. Like, there was just kids nationwide, you know, bopping long. Well, the owl, the tootsie pop owl,

had something to do with that, I guess. Like, it's, how do you take, like, a slogan from, like, this innocent owl and turn it into, yeah, this anthem. It's almost like when the vapes did the flavors, like peach, so the kids would smoke them. But I also need to know what did the Tutsi Pop Corporation have to say, like, did they not get sued? Like, this seems like something they don't not want to be associated with,

particularly as a children's candy. I should look that. It would be great to see what their reaction was then, or if they had to get some clearance from, yeah, from like the Tootsie Company. I'm dying to know. It's exactly what you said, like the kind of like this anthem. And another song where Kim was trying to show, like, I can, like, this is me.

I'm explicit. Like, I am provocative. Like, you know, she's trying to kind of own it, I guess, in a way that shows that, you know, she has some control. And like, she's now she has her career in her hands. And this is what she, this is the direction she wants to go. This is the mother of WAP, basically. I just wanted to say how many Licks ran so Wop could slide.

And I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm very sorry. I'll go now. Oh, that's good. Okay, cool. Well, why don't you tell me, like, what happens next? Like, this is, are we at Lady Marmalade yet?

Because Lil' Kim is very famous. And have we hit where Lil' Kim gets, introduced to all of our parents. Right. Like that song, that anthem was so huge and really like solidified or just kind of maybe like confirmed her status as like this huge pop star who would be on a song with Christina Aguilera. And Maya and. Yeah. With Maya and I think pink, pink. Pink. No shade to pink. Pink is an icon. Yeah, pink. And, you know, she is easing into this lane where she is, you know, started out as, this hardcore rapper who was part of a crew and broke out. And it's showing that she can make and be on radio songs. She can make, you know, singles for radio, even though, yeah, how many

looks was pretty explicit. I just need to point out to those of you that were not there, how insane the year 2000 was that a film named Mulan Rouge was created with Nicole Kidman. It's a bizarre musical. Then this song, was remade to be on the soundtrack. The video features these four women, as Dylan has pointed out, the Mount Rushmore of women pop stars at the time. In Boudoir clothing, I think we have to hear a clip of this. Like, we literally would be remiss if we don't include a clip of Lady Marmalade in the Lil' Kim's story.

We come through with the money in the garden belts. Let them know we bout that cake, straight out the gate. We'll depend a woman. Some mistake us for whores. I'm saying, why spend mine? We have to spin yours. It was just this kind of massive female collective, female pop collectives, like specifically. And, you know, Kim was always dominant.

Like, she showed that she could own different spaces. Like, she could own the fashion space, the rap space, the pop space, commercial, radio. She kind of, like, was so fluid in all these worlds. And part of that was that she, just from people I've spoken to, like, she was a sweet person and, like, really amenable to different, like, to experimentation. Like she wanted to be photographed in different ways and like try different things. And she was open to kind of like being like a muse for people, for designers, for, you know, for other artists. Like she wanted to like show her creativity in like different spaces, I think.

And, you know, Moulin Rouge is like a show of that that she can hold her own on this song with all these other powerhouses, including like Maya, you know, one of my favorites. Robbed. she was robbed of a more robust career, I must say. I also have to point out that this is the only Grammy that Lil Kim ever won, which is really fucked up and unfair. But, you know, this song was really massive and it did win a Grammy and it won her Grammy. Yeah, so many women in rap, they were robbed of Grammy moments because there were two years where the Grammys had a separate female rap award and Missy won both years.

And then they kind of like ended it, basically. Which is, you know, it's good to have rappers just in one, like not separate. them. But then it's also like, well, you have to also like nominate women and keep, keep it, you know, fair. Kim should have a Grammy for hardcore. A hundred percent. It shows how much things have changed that Megan the Stallion has her Grammys, like she's kind of getting this recognition. So maybe, maybe in a way we've come a long way. Would you say that this era, Lil' Kim, is her peak? I would say, yeah, I would say the early 2000s is peak. Kim, but in a way that really, the 90s, I mean, her first album is just hard to top all of those

kind of like verses that she was on and all of that. But in terms of in pop, yes. Yeah, I think maybe like in cultural, like making a cultural impact on the world, I think this might have been peak Kim. Yeah, 2000s. And then, you know, after, you know, after the second album, she kind of took more of a turn. Like she came out with La Bella Mafia, like that album. But then there's a scent where she served time in prison for perjury. And, you know, it's the other half of her career where it's like, all right, I've hit, like, her cultural kind of like touch still moments and now it's like, okay, what now? And, you know, she's still making music.

It's just, it's a different, I guess, frequency that she's on. How long was she in prison? She was sentenced to a year and a day in prison. She was released from prison after about 10 months. But she didn't go to prison until after La Bella Mafia. Yeah, that was, she was released from president in 2005. So that period between, you know, LaBella Mafia and like the Naked Truth era, Kim, where she had to kind of like reemerge and reinvent herself in a way was, I don't want to say downturn,

but it was a different, it was, you know, the peak, after you hit the peak, it's all right, here's, it's just steady. Yeah, it was also a different time. It was a different time in hip-hop, right? Because now we have 50 Cent has entered the chat. You know, like, and I can't totally remember, but was there another rising female rapper at this time that was sort of fighting for the attention? During the early 2000s, I mean, we had a rush of, you know,

people like Evatrina, Shauna to Bratt was still, you know, making music and they were on the charts. And this was really pre-Nickey Minaj, you know, Rami Ma, the last time that there was this affluence of women in hip-hop, like at the same time. And then there was just a period where it was like, where did they go? Yeah, where did everybody? It was a void. Yeah.

And so Kim was, you know, she wasn't like, you know, she was putting out music, but it wasn't hitting the same spot, so to speak. Yeah. Well, speaking of 50 Cent, why don't we hear Magic Sting? because that did hit the spot, and it is one of my favorite songs to this day. That was Magic Stick by Lil Kim featuring 50 Cent, another gorgeous euphemism. Yeah, one of her best collaborations. She's really great just playing off guys on records.

So what's going on in Lil' Kim's career now? Because now Nikki Minaj has entered the chat. Lil Kim, I think leading up to prison, she did like a reality or a docu-series about her journey preparing to like be away from the scene. Yeah, it was called Lil Kim, Countdown to Lockdown. Yeah. And that was what, 2004? So Magic Stick and 2006.

It came out. Oh, okay. So was that after then? I think it came out after, yeah, 2006, because Magic Stick came out 2000. I'm just looking at Mr. Wikipedia, 2008. Yeah, that was like 2004. Four, yeah. Yeah, yeah.

So Kim had to kind of reinvent and reemerge. And, you know, she hasn't like talked about her surgeries really openly. The one thing she has said is that she ended up having to get like another nose job because of a boyfriend who unfortunately like assaulted her. And, you know, so there's just so much kind of like tragic circumstances around her. But I guess like elephant in the room is that she looked different from when she came out. her appearance was changing and had changed from, I would say, La Bella Mafia to like, you know, in between, like after that time. And so she became the subject more so of gossip, you know,

jokes about her parents or jokes about like how, oh, Loham looks like she doesn't look like anything like herself anymore. And so we're in the more, you know, like more so tabloid, you know, Yeah. Actually, we're in the tabloid scandal phase of Kim's career because now it's more about prison and like it's about her appearance and it's about things beside her music. And also honestly everyone's career, right? That was like peak us weekly peak like Nicole Richie is anorexic. Lindsay Lohan has a Coke problem. Like I'm not saying that they had those. I'm saying the tabloids were alleging that and that was like their bread and butter of the tablets was just to like, it was a bit pre-gossip internet. So it was just.

just like tabloid era. And so she kind of bore the brunt of that, unfortunately, with that timing. In terms of records with impact, this is where it starts to slide a bit. And so most of the songs that I selected are more like the top middle of her career. Like you said, there was a certain peak. And now I'm kind of going through and I end up going back. Yeah. Yeah.

You know, we can just say little Kim was on dancing with. the stars. She's not gone. She's not done. She's been doing stuff slowly and steadily. The fact that while Lil Kim isn't at her cultural peak anymore, we see Lil Kim everywhere we look. You know, there wouldn't be, like you pointed out, WOP, they wouldn't be a Cardi, there wouldn't be a Megan, there wouldn't be a Nikki as much as she might hate us to say that. Like without Lil Kim, a lot of other women, even in other genres who feel empowered to be explicit, to be sexual to own their sexuality. They owe a lot to Lil' Kim.

Her influences everywhere, visually, like, sound-wise. And the same way that, you know, Madonna created this template for women in pop and, like, this audacity that people can look to for inspiration or just even, you know, her different hours of reinvention. Kim provided this kind of new way of seeing women and new way of kind of embracing that we have, you know, there are multitudes to women in. rap and and pop that they don't have to just be one thing now. And I think, you know, she definitely, what was the thing you said? So Wap can slide. Yes, she ran. Yeah. Kim, you know, she took,

she took some of that so that many of these women can like flourish today. Yeah. Well, we've been talking about Kim's massive influence on, you know, almost every woman in rap that came after her. But I think we can also say she made a huge impact on her fan base as well. And we did gather some fan voices to talk about Kim's influence and I wanted to play those for you right now. Cool. Yes. Let's listen. So what has always appealed to me about well, Kim is how she wield power. I'm fat. I'm gay. I'm non-binary. I'm a femme. And she is one of the reasons I really started to think about what my life would be like if I loved myself.

Her songs crush on you and dreams are always on my playlist when I'd be getting ready to go, to hype myself up, or just wanting to feel a little sexy myself, you know? I was about 12 when I first came to her music. I didn't have any power. I had experienced things that made me feel powerless. And like I would always be powerless. So to have her puncture all this headline misogyny made me feel like something else was possible. We knew she was in a way, quote-unquote, in a boys' club, but that didn't stop her from bringing in a feminine touch.

I mean, every kid needs a queen, right? She is a product of one of the top five lyricists of all time. She's executed it perfectly, and no female in hip-hop has ever been able to replicate that, especially on our first album. There's no female rapper in the game that can say they did not get influenced by Lil'Kim, and that's even including the iconic Nicki Minaj. She blew my fucking mind and expanded my world's tenfold and I will always be grateful to Lil Kim. The Queen Bee deserves all her flowers.

So she's here. Shout out to Kim. Yes, to all of it. I mean, I think we heard so much interesting stuff from these fans. Like something that I don't think we've even talked about yet is like maybe how relatable Lil Kim was to the LGBTQ. community to non-binary people, just like to like the spectrum of people that were not just, you know, females looking up to another woman. And I think that's really cool. Yeah, she was very

queer friendly and she was pretty open about it. You know, like an interview is about wanting to reach a fan base that was wide and that was inclusive from the very beginning of her career. Like what stands out to me about these calls is just the, you know, like there was this discovery process that was happening through Kim or this self-discovery that was happening, you know, a lot for women. But then like such a wide, such a like broad swath of people, you know, were discovering what, you know, their musical tastes or like their sexuality, you know, just kind of learning things about sex even that maybe were shocking. So that process and just her kind of having that space in people's lives and hearts, I think is, you know, it was kind of.

of unprecedented and it was something that like Kim singularly owns as an artist is the way that she did that for people. And you know like yeah, the relatable style while she had this really aspirational look and was always wearing the name brands and things like that. She still felt like a little sister in a way. Like she still felt like someone. I think people had an instinct to you know, protect. She was like a sweetheart. She was a rap sweetheart. And I think that really, you know, that's what I'm kind of hearing in these calls, just like the trend setting and the discovery that was able to happen through her.

Yeah, I mean, I think something that stuck out also to me is like the idea of hearing about sexuality from the mouth of a woman in such a like owned and explicit way was really new for a lot of people at that time. You know, you have a lot of men talking about sex explicitly, obviously. And then you have a lot of women who did talk about sex, pop stars and stuff, innuendo, you know? But this was, I think, for a lot of fans and people, their first experience

hearing a woman just own sexuality and talk about it directly. And it probably blew a lot of people's minds and actually empowered a lot of people to feel that they could do that too. Right. It was mind-blowing, like one of the fans said. And I think that translates across the board, just that shock value kind of. And it contains like the, you know, some of her predecessors like the Bessie Smiths and like the black women before her who maybe weren't operating in hip hop or in rap, but they were, they had a similar kind of like outsized personality and expression that I think she continued just through a different genre, basically. There's just so much that she kind of gave the music world and just, you know, hearing it just many years later from when she was introduced

is really just, I think it's powerful. And, you know, that impact is, it really is just one of a kind in rap. There's no one like Kim. Yeah, I think it's honestly one of a kind in any genre. On that note, Clover, you know, we've reached the end of our journey. What songs should we leave the fans with and the new fans? People have discovered Kim now through our little podcast. One song that has kind of entered the atmosphere a bit lately,

is Ladies Night, although that's not the official title of the song. People call it Ladies Night, but it's really like a remix. And I think people are talking about it because we have this, we have more women in rap being successful. And so people want to see a version of that now. It's like, okay, like, we need another Ladies Night. And, you know, that was one of her biggest records in terms of, like, also in terms of pop. What is the song actually called? Not Tonight. Not Tonight.

So I'll leave with Not Tonight by Lil'Kim and her squadron of female rappers. If you liked what you heard today, subscribe to more episodes of Fansplaying only on Spotify. Our fantastic guest today was Clover Hope. Be sure to check out her new book, The Mother Load, 100 plus women who made hip hop in stores now. Shout out to our Lil Kim fans who volunteered their voices for this episode. Thank you to O'Neill Anderson, Kim Selling, Dominique Nicole. Cole, Claire Lobenfeld, and Amanda Ochoa. Fansplain is a Spotify original series produced in partnership with Spoke Media.

This episode was produced and edited by Cody Hoffmuckle, with help from Sherita Lensolest, Dylan Rupert, Carson McCain, and Hebron Mendoz. Mixing and sound design by Will Short. Our executive producers for Spoke Media are Alia Tavacoleon, Keith Reynolds, and Janiel Kastner. Our executive producers for Spotify are Liz Gaetly, Gina Delvac, and me, Yossi Salas. Our catchy and gorgeous theme song was composed by Bethany Costantino and Jennifer Clavin, and graciously recorded by Carlos de Lagarsa. Special thanks to Felipe Gihermino, Leah Edwards, David McDenna, Dana Meyerson, and, as always, the framed drawing of Dave Matthews I Got on Deepop, whose spirit guides this entire show.