DISGRACELAND - Lil' Kim: Shootouts, Lusty Lyrics, and Loyalty in the Land of the M.A.F.I.A.

Episode Date: June 20, 2023

Lil’ Kim is the queen of hard core. She practically invented hard core sex positivity with her raunchy raps and head-turning getups. She survived a hard core beef that ended in a spur-of-the-moment shootout. Then she became the first female rapper to serve hard core time in prison…and release a full-length album from her cell. As Lil’ Kim blazed through the 1990s and early 2000s with searing bars about what she did in the bedroom, listeners idolized her unpolished and truthful takes on feminine sexuality. But in the end, it was a reckless lie that put her behind bars. This episode contains themes that may be disturbing to some listeners, including domestic violence. For the full list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.com  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends.

Trust me, babe. On the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring the 14th season of Family Secrets.

He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to Season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th, on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? You'd rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things,

Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode contains content that may be disturbing to some listeners. Please check the show notes for more information.

Disgrace Land is a production of Double Elvis. The stories about Lil Kim are insane. She lived on the streets when she was 14 to escape her abusive father. She survived the shootout when her beef with a fellow rap star lit up a Manhattan radio station. She committed perjury to save her crew from prison time. They didn't return the favor. She straddled the sex positivity movement with lyrics that reinvented what it meant to be a woman in hip-hop. Her music counted the diamonds in her rings and told the world,

that's how many times she wanted to finish. She's a walking quote-unquote explicit content sticker that paved the way for songs like Cardi B and Megan the Stallions Watt, even 25 years after Lil Kim's solo debut. Few rappers expose their sexuality like she can't, because Lil Kim makes filthy and great music. Unlike that loop I played for you at the top of the show, that wasn't great music.

That was a preset loop for my melody, called You Better Get Bad Jack, MK. I played you that clip because I can't afford the rights to stutter by Joe featuring mystical. And why would I play you that specific slice of two-time-in-r-N-R-N-B cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on February 25, 2001, and that was the day that would lead Lil Kim down a path of perjury and prison time. On this episode, shootouts, explicit content, sex positivity, loyalty in the land of the mafia, and Lou Kemp. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

Red Rivera struggled to make sense of the sweaty mass pulsing in front of her. Hips grinding, beers spilling, a blur of flesh with arms and legs poking out. Somewhere inside that mess was Ingrid's gift. She had to fish it out. She elvied her way through the throng of people, and the souls of her stilettos stuck to the nightclothes floor. The flowers. Where were those goddamn flowers?

Ingrid's mission was straightforward. Find the bouquet she walked in with. Don't get distracted by Wycliffe Jean and Missy Elliott chatting in the corner. Avoid any and all romantic advances, then make a special delivery. It was a simple task if you weren't flying high on cocktails. But Ingrid reached cruising altitude hours ago, and now the skies were looking murky.

Under no circumstances could she get distracted. Ingrid's bouquet had to go straight into the arms of the birthday girl, aka Ingrid's Idol, aka Queen B, aka Lil Kim. The party at Spotlight Live that evening, August 3, 2008, was for Lil Kim's 33rd birthday. The club itself was open to the public all night long. Fans knew they could find Kim inside. Big fans like Ingrid who came bearing gifts.

She brought a bouquet worthy of a queen into the Manhattan club that night. A barkeep stashed it away when Ingrid couldn't find the birthday girl. And now Ingrid couldn't find that bouquet. She couldn't even find her friends. Ingrid turned her head to the left. The room swayed to the right. There had to be a closet or a VIP lounge she didn't know about. Some secret stash space removed from the chaos.

Ingrid opened the first door she found and staggered inside. urinals and bathroom stalls, definitely not storage. But there was a manager in that room who was happy to show Ingrid the right door, the door that led to the street. It was almost 3 a.m. She was a liability stumbling around in those stilettos. The manager wasn't there to babysit. Time to give up and go home.

So Ingrid was tossed outside. Another employee from the club disagreed. The barkeep who had stowed away her bouquet earlier approached Ingrid on the street. He could get her back inside and help her make that special delivery. He even had access to the club's VIP. penthouse. He'd get Ingrid's flowers and bring her right to the roof. That's probably where Little Kim was camped out for the evening. All she needed to do was join him in the freight elevator. He was going to fuck her cousin. Fuck her like it was nothing. Like their relationship didn't mean

shit to him. Like it was normal to hoe around with your girl's family. That motherfucker Biggie Smalls is going to fuck her cousin. Little Kim tried to get comfortable in her chair at the recording studio. She couldn't bring herself to make eye contact with her lover. She couldn't to bring herself to do much of anything. So what if Usher needed verses for his song? Usher could wait. Kim was in no mood to lay down Barras, not after what she just learned. Her cousin wanted $400 for the deed. What'd you're going to do for $400, Biggie asked. Kim shuddered at the thought. Not at the thought of the sex. She could rap about sex all night long. She'd tell you where to shove it, lick it, eat it, kiss it, stroke it, whatever, wherever. Little Kim straddled the sex positivity

movement in the 90s, but even she at her limit. She drew the line of disloyalty. No boyfriend of Lil Kim was going to double-timer with her own family, not even rap royalty like the notorious B-I-G, because Lil Kim was rap royalty too. Cross Queen B, and she'll have your head served on a platinum record. She could have reached across the room and beheaded Biggie herself, if the idea had tickled her.

Biggie didn't even need to be here. That traitor just wanted to hover nearby as if Kim needed help cranking out lyrics. She had her verses. She was good. But she wasn't feeling good on the instance. side. Unfaithful motherfucker, ungrateful motherfucker. If you went worshiping at the altar, little Kim, she don't need it. Usher still needed those verses, though. Biggie would make sure he got them. Immediately. He ordered Kim into the hallway to speak in private. She glared up at him and waited

for the lecture. Biggie told her to grow up here and spit her bars already. He wanted bars, huh? Some vicious rhymes to send shivers down his spine. She had plenty of those stored up just for him. Kim fired off. Told Biggie to keep it in his pants and keeps guard up. She had the higher ground, and there was no way she was going to give up this. Biggie reached for his strap. He wrapped his hand around the handle of his pistol. Kim froze. Biggie wasn't asking her to record the verses.

He was telling her. If she had a problem with that, she could keep a bullet just like anyone else. Kim stormed back into the studio. She spit out her verses like venom. So this was love, the command of protect you and he'll threaten you anyway. just like her father did to her mother, just like Biggie did to Lil Kim. It was the same old pattern, violence, always looming around every corner, even when Kim believed she was around people she could trust.

Her father's fist pushed her mother out of their family when Kim was eight. Back then, she was just Kimberly Jones, daughter of a military man who believed to brute force. One time, her father socked her mother in the face and told friends that her two black eyes were because she just fell down. Kim's mother would rather live out of the trunk of a car than fall down again, so that's exactly what she did. Kim did the same thing when she was 14. She picked the streets of Brooklyn over her father's verbal and physical abuse, which was handed down to her like a family heirloom. Men could be volatile. Kim learned that lesson early. But they could also be tamed, and little Kim was a regular snake charmer.

She adapted quickly on the streets of Bed-Stuy. She had a boyfriend who had food and protection. And if he could have great sex, you had yourself a boyfriend at no time flat, even if no money was exchanged. Sex was currency. In that sense, Lil Kim was rich. And the notorious B.I.G. knew he could make her even richer. When Biggie first met Kim on Fulton Street, she seemed too cute to rap.

At 17 years old and 4'11, she didn't look like your average rap star. But Lil Kim was sicker than your average, and she was sexier too. Turns out Kim could wrap fast and furious, foaming at the mouth, just like Biggie. Didn't matter. He insisted men didn't want to hear hard truths coming from a petite little thing from Brooklyn. They wanted a sex kitten spit in rhymes about swallowing. A goddess could knock a man to his knees every time she mentioned her immaculate pussy, which, in Little Kim's world, was like every 30 seconds.

Biggie started Kim as a member of Junior Mafia, a hip-hop group of his own creation. Perverses peppered their 1995 debut conspiracy with foul-mulled. sexuality. She didn't just tell men to put their face between her thighs. She told them she'd count dollar bills while her nectar gushed down their throats. It was clear. Lil Kim needed her own album to detail her own sex capades with her own verses, enough of people crediting Biggie for her hard work. Lil Kim had her own ideas about her debut solo album. She craves something so explicit it would make faithful men sweat, something so enticing. It could make tail-chasing bachelors dream about marriage and baby carriages.

Something hardcore. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air,

so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,

and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move, and he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia

Clark. When like young people come up to me and they want to be an act or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head. with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stance, like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. And I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello-O.

I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kimman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that.

Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Madarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu. Camilla Morone at Carrie Kenny Silver. And more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great books take you places. Through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget.

I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robey and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off. Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations. that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to Bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Brought to you by Cotton, the fabric of our lives.

Lil Kim took too much this time. She was doubled over on the stretcher. Her stomach spasmed. It squelched and squirmed like a rabbit animal. She tried to soothe herself. You know who you are. You're Lil Kim, bitch. Nothing was too freaky for her.

She could take anything, wink, wink. Even a plastic tube shoved down her throat. A paramedic pushed the tube through Lil Kim's nose and down her windpipe. He coaxed it into her stomach. Then he switched on the suction. Fluid pumped through the tubing. Lil Kim swallowed more than she could handle tonight. Leaders more.

So much that the liquid was eating away at the lining of her stomach. Not drugs, not alcohol. Will Kim needed her stomach pump to remove all the... Okay, I'm going to come right out and say it. There's no way Little Kim consumed so much semen that she needed her stomach pumped. It doesn't even contain an active ingredient that could hurt your internal organs, but I digress. The urban legend that Little Kim needed to have come pumped out of her in a medical capacity is 100% absurd. But that never stopped anyone from repeating it.

The myth was spread in high school hallways, record stores, online message boards, Some versions added new details. Little Kim collapsed on stage mid-performance that her fling with Biggie was to blame. One version involved an elephant, which, come on, seriously? You could speculate that Kim's nasty bars inspired such a vulgar rumor, untrue. This fable dated back to the 1970s when people told the same story about Rod Stewart or David Bowie. Britney Spears was featured in future versions. Gross as it was, the stomach pump story was an urban legend made for legends.

it was a legend fit for a queen. And Little Kim was quickly becoming just that. Her debut album, Hardcore, sucked and fucked its way to number 11 on the Billboard 200 in 1996. Listeners were seduced by Lil Kim's sticky depictions of what she could do to you and what she demanded you do for her. Her rhymes about throwing lips on certain body parts seduced Americans into buying 1.5 million copies. And just in case anyone struggled to picture the pornographic scenes Lil Kim described, the album art included a photo to stimulate their imagination.

It's a snap of Kim squatting on the floor in a cheetah-print bikini. Legs spread, feathered robe grazing her bare skin. Bedroom eyes locked a camera level. The notorious BIG handpicked the photo from the album photo shoot. It was one of his last tips for his lover and protege before he was assassinated just months later in the spring of 1997. His death was proof that the East Coast West Coast beef and mainstream hip-hop had gone too far. But Biggie's absence was also proof that Lil Kim was nobody's puppet. The Queen Bee could rule on her own just fine.

Kim loved Biggie fiercely, but that didn't mean she needed him to sustain her career. She counted her coins while hardcore went platinum, and then double platinum. Her following record, the notorious K-I-M, flew off the shelves even faster in 2000. It was a new century, a new era for women in rap music. Dudes weren't the only ones bragging about their platinum plaques and designer digs. Kim could afford to drape herself with clothes from any of the brand she named dropped in her songs, Chanel to Versace. She had so much cash as she had a favorite kind of fur.

It's chinchilla, by the way. She kept her closet full of fur coats for modest days, a fur bikini for everything else. She wore a 30-carat diamond belly chain. Pasties, in every shade, especially lavender, like the one that caused Diana Ross to jiggle Kim's exposed breast at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1999. She melded sex, style, and songwriting into one persona. Lil Kim would tell you to count the diamonds in her rings and then demand you give her the same number of orgasms in one breath.

Lil Kim wasn't the first woman to rap. She wasn't even the first woman to rap about sex, but she was the first woman to tell you she was down to fuck in explicit terms, just like one of the men. Not have sex. Fuck. In the mid-1990s, there was another woman in hip-hop spelling out her desires. A certified fox.

She put her pussy right in the title of her debut album, called it Lil Nana. It dropped one week after hardcore, and she went by the name of Foxy Brown. No one knew where Lil Kim's feud with Foxy Brown came from. Didn't matter. All hip-hop fame came with a beef, and Lil Kim beef with Foxy Brown like she was at a steakhouse. Their rivalry divided mainstream hip-hop into two sides. Kim had junior mafia behind her. Foxy Brown had murder unit.

As far as Kim was concerned, Junior Mafia was the winning team. Because in the mafia's land, loyalty does everything. Foxy Brown could have shared that loyalty was Kim. They were even supposed to make an album together. They were going to call it Thelma and Louise. But when you want to be the Queen Bee, but you can't be, people get mad. At least, that's how Kim saw it. Both women wounded each other with their wordplay.

Puffy even did some Kim's bidding. Puffy and Kim hot on Little Cease's track play around in the night. In 1999, in which Puffy demanded that a Lil' Kim copycat stopped trying to sound like her. Kim continued the battle on The Notorious K-I-M with a jab that Foxy wasn't a star, and even her label knew it. Foxy fired back on Capone and Noriega's 2000 album The Reunion. She damned the notorious K-I.M. to the bottom of the bargain bin, said it was lame and weak. Neither woman named names, but everyone knew who they were talking about. Little Kim and Foxy Brown were vixents to the hip-hop world, but villains to each other.

Kim didn't sweat it. She knew who wore the pants in this new era of hip-hop. After all, who did the industry call when Pink, Christina Aguilera, and Maya remade made Lady Marmalade for the Mulan Rouge soundtrack? Only one rapper boasted the crossover appeal to hang with all the mainstream pop girls in 2001. The song was a half-phony French, half-English, all-sex, but somehow no swears, banger. This new Lady Marmalade represented all things fierce and female about the turn of the century. It peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100.

and stayed there for five weeks. It remains Lil Kim's best-selling single to this day. So while Foxy Brown talked shit, Kim was busy counting bank figures. And if Foxy ever wanted to walk the walk and start a proper fight, Kim would handle it like a real bitch. When Little Kim rolled up, she rolled deep. Lil C's, larceny, her bodyguard,

C. Gutta, her manager, Damien Butler. They all trailed behind her when she burst through the doors of Hot 97. She had a real treat for the Manhattan. Latin radio station that afternoon. Three members of Junior Mafia were in the building. The group disbanded years ago, literally in the last century, but their names still carried Wade in the hip-hop world. Besides, Lil Kim, Lil Seas, and Larsonie were forever bonded by the land of the mafia.

Nothing could separate them. Hot 97 stacked its schedule on that day, February 25, 2001. The DJ would interview Kim first, then he'd usher out the door and welcome guest number two for the afternoon. Capone. as in one half of Capone in Noriega, the very same Capone, who allowed Foxy Brown to take aim at Kim on his new album. Foxy's remarks were the latest jab in their years-long feud. Their beef was growing stale, tiresome. Kim's crew was ready to bury it once and for all, even if it meant burying Foxy Brown's posse.

It was a scene straight out of a western. Kim's crew was exiting the radio station. Capone's crew stood in the street. Hot 97 wasn't big enough for the two of them. You got beef with Lil Kim, Versailles cried out. A member of Capone's crew answered with a bullet. That was C. Gutus Q. Kim's bodyguard reached for the Mac 11 strapped under his vest.

Military grade. This was war. Bullets flew across Hudson Street, straight into the walls of nearby apartments. Then, straight to a member of murder unit's crew. A bullet pierced one of Capone's buddies in the back, when the impact knocked him onto the sidewalk. He froze in a growing puddle of his own blood, Pretended he dropped dead just in case someone else wanted to plant a bullet in his brain for good measure.

But Kim's crew wasn't sticking around to survey the damage. She ducked to her limo with her entourage and tore ass away from the scene. The man who'd been shot stumbled to his feet. His clothes soaked in blood. He staggered into the street and hailed a cab to the hospital. That man lived. So did the beef. Loyalty in the land of the mafia was about to be.

We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro, and these are just a few of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of family secrets. And just then, we felt the plain turn in the air,

so much so that the bags that were under people's seats just kind of flew into the aisle. Each week, we dive head first into the complex power of secrecy, how it shapes our identities and relationships, and how it ultimately can reveal to us our truest selves. My daughter, she's pretending she doesn't know, but is trying to cook and feed me and keep me alive because I wasn't eating anything,

and me pretending like everything was fine. He kind of showed me out of the way and said, move. And he went out the front door, and he jumped in a car and drove off, and that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets, starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark. When, like, young people come up to me and they want to be an actor or whatever, my first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. Dennis Leary. I wake up and I'm hitting him in the head with a water bomb.

And Bruce Jenner is on the aisle in a karate stage. Like he's about to attack me, like, making karate noises. And his entire, the Kardashians family over there, everybody's going, and the air marshal is trying to grab my arms and screaming. I immediately know that I've been asleep walking. David O'Yello. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts.

Guy Branham. So anyway, Nicole Kidman broke up with Keith Thurban. Being half of a country couple was always a hat she was going to wear, not like a life she was going to lead. Oh, interesting. I like that. Did you practice that on your way over? Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things. Tena Monsu.

Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more. Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like great shoes, great boys. books take you places through unforgettable love stories and into conversations with characters you'll never forget. I think any good romance, it gives me this feeling of like butterflies. I'm Danielle Robeye and this is bookmarked by Reese's Book Club from Hello Sunshine and IHeart Podcast, where we dive into the stories that shape us on the page and off.

Each week I'm joined by authors, celebs, book talk stars, and more for conversations that will make you laugh, cry, and add way too many books to your TBR pile. Listen to bookmarked by Reese's Book Club on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Brought to you by Cotton, The Fabric of Our Lives. Lil Kim scanned the options in front of her. Frayed Daisy Dukes, a champagne-colored gown, a fire red top embroidered with beating. The Queen of Rap could do better. This was no ordinary day in front of the camera. Today was a promotional shoot for her new album, The Naked Truth. Where was the fur, the sequin pasties?

Hell, send back the cheetah-print bikini from the hardcore album art. This rack of clothes was a farce compared to Kim's wardrobe at home. She forked over $20,000 to $30,000 every month to keep her style looking fresh. That meant a wig for every hour of the day. Over 2,500 pairs of shoes, a designated room for each designer. 3,000 manicures that decorated her nails was shredded $100 bills. Little Kim literally. destroyed money to remind everyone she's still wrapped for fat stacks. Just crunched the numbers for

La Bella Mafia, her platinum record from 2003. The outfits in front of Kim today were not Bella. They were boring. Queen Bee deserved better, but she didn't have any time to complain. The clock was ticking. Not from the record label. The clock from the feds. Lil Kim was going to jail. Kim didn't fire a gun that day outside a Hot 97 in 2001. She didn't so much as swing a fist, but she had another way of backing up her crew. She used the same lips to put other rappers on blasts. Lil Kim lied on her oath repeatedly. In 2001 and 2003, she testified that her manager, Damien Butler, wasn't at the scene of the shootout.

Security footage from Hot 97 said otherwise. A tape showed him standing beside her at the station, before enduring. the shooting. Strike one. Then Damien pulled a gun and fired at Capone's crew. Strike two. There was another lie. Kim said she didn't know is Sigara, her own bodyguard. Strike three, you know, you're out. In March in 2005, Lil Kim was convicted of lying to a grand jury and three counts of conspiracy. The security tapes from Hot 97 alone could have locked her up, but it got worse when her crew took the stand. Damien Butler and Sea Gata owned up to everything and pleaded guilty. Larson's accurate account as an eyewitness shattered Kim's statement. So did

Lil Cis's testimony. Lil Cis claimed he had no choice since he was subpoenaed. Bullshit, you always had a choice. Kim had a choice, right? Either tell the truth, damn or crew, or lie your ass off and give them a chance of freedom. She chose wrong. Now all her decisions revolved around finishing the naked truth before her prison sentence. She had three days until she traded those designer clothes for an orange jumpsuit or whatever women wore at prison camps. The judge assigned Kim the same destination as Martha Stewart. The court argued that Kim and Martha Stewart were stuck in the same boat. That was a riot. One woman was a mild-mannered homemaker guiding women toward their best domestic lives, and the other was the patron saint of sinners' route. But they were both liars.

Insider trading and perjury were just two different forms of dishonesty, and the judge wanted Kim's sentence to mirror Martha's time in prison so no one could cry discrimination. But Martha got five months at her prison camp, and Kim got a year and a day. So much for keeping things even. Kim knew what she really was. She was an example the feds could point to when they needed to demonstrate what happened to rappers who stepped out of line. Her trial was just another battle in the government's war on hip-hop.

They indicted Kim for her music, not her lies. She used her new album to make those politics loud and clear. The Naked Truth had balls and stripped away the bullshit, kept it body, sneered at snitches, boasted its allegiance to bedside. And if you still wanted to spread rumors that Little Kim was dead broke or sniffing coke, she had a specific message for you. Shut up, bitch. The naked truth even condemned Junior Mafia and anyone who was still riding with him.

That chapter of Little Kim's career was through. It was 2005, for Christ's sake, the 90s were long gone. And so was Kim's trust. She could hear the inmates calling to her from where she sat on her bus. They banged on the slittered windows in their prison cells. Fists on glass rumbled like an earthquake. They were sending a message, we've got your back. Her time was up.

No more sitting lovely and popping Don P in the club. No more $3,000 manicures. No more non-stop album hustle. Lil Kim's prison sentence began today. September 19, 2005. Kim sent a decoy out of the bus first. Her cousin, also 4'4.11. That didn't fool of prisoners.

They held their clamoring until they saw the real. deal. Fans pressed against the bus door, and there was no turning back now. Kim already tried to turn back the clock once, and her attorney called the Department of Probations earlier that morning, requesting to push back her sentence. No dice. The department claimed that if Kim wanted an extension so badly, she should have asked earlier. Kim fought the urge to clap back. Maybe she would have accruced an extension earlier if she knew where the feds were actually sending her. Just days earlier, Kim thought she'd be whisked away to a low-security federal prison camp. That was all bullshit.

The feds wanted her at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center as if she was the one who fired a gun. Meanwhile, America's glorified housewife got to frolic through a facility with low fences like it was a dinner party. But did Martha Stewart have dozens of prisoners banging on the walls when she made her grand entrance? Bet not. Kim had allies waiting for her on the other side of those cement walls.

She had just as many loyal fans gathered on the outside. She just hoped they'd still be there when she finally walked back out. Lil Kim didn't have to wait very long to find out if her fans would stick by her side. Her kingdom awaited the moment she finished her prison sentence. The crowd outside the detention center packed itself so tightly as she could barely squeeze herself out the door. Fans closed in from every angle, pushing, prodding, shrieking. They thrust gifts in her path, wave signs in her face.

For months, Kim's fans sustained themselves with the naked truth. which dropped barely a week into her prison time. That's right. She dropped her fourth album from behind bars, like she didn't give a fuck if she saw how well it did. It's still the only album from a female rapper to be awarded a five-mic rating from the source. Real gangster shit. But little Kim was no gangster when she was doing time.

The feds let Kim out of prison early on good behavior. She quickly made peace that she wasn't going to a prison camp as promised, and she cultivated a new routine to help her pass the time. church on Sundays, Bible study on Tuesdays, karaoke on Christmas. She made damn sure no one had a reason to keep her locked up for a moment longer than necessary. She was a threat to the rap game. The Fed sprang her two months earlier, right before the 4th of July in 2006. She would have to endure a month under house arrest and three years under supervision to fully complete her sentence.

And that was just fine by her. Kim was barely out the door and life already felt more normal. She was back in demand, back to her time. chariot. A silver Rolls-Royce reved up and ready to go. Back to the front page of every celebrity magazine. Images of Little Kim leaving prison clutching a balloon in a bouquet of white roses made the rounds in major music publications. She slipped into the back seat of the rolls and the rush of fame flushed her cheeks for the first time in 10 months. She had work to do. An MTV Video Music Awards appearance to prepare for. Lavish parties to throw. Relationships to re-evaluate.

She glanced down at the bouquet in her lap and the balloon bumping against the roof of the back sea. Kim wasn't sure which parts of her circle were loyal anymore, which she knew her fans were loyal to the death. The freight elevator felt like an oven. The air conditioning repairman dabbed sweat from his forehead as it climbed to the roof of the spotlight live. It was an easy gig if he could endure August afternoon, slinging nuts and bolts at top Manhattan skyscrapers. He just needed to get into the utility shed on the roof and get out as fast as possible. He needed a strong stomach too. He wretched when he opened the the door to the shed. The corpse inside was battered, caked with dried blood. Gora spilled from the head.

Someone tried to bash this person's brains in, maybe with a pipe, maybe with a champagne bottle. Ingrid Rivera never found her flowers three nights earlier on August 3, 2008. The barkeep she met outside the club had no intention of guiding Ingrid to her idol. It was a lie to get her alone. He killed her while 500 guests kept bottle service busy downstairs. And then he shoved the evidence into the utility shed on the roof of the building. No one knew about Ingrid's murder, not the nightclub staff, not the partygoers, not even the party's host, Lil Kim. Kim was heartbroken, but she could probably relate, at least a little bit. Lil Kim was a stone cold stunner who claimed she'd kill a man for her man by any means. Her loyalty was ironclad, but she couldn't say the same about everyone around

her. Kim trusted Biggie back of the day when he wasn't pointing a gun at her. She trusted her father until she became his punching bag just like her mother. She trusted her crew so much that she stuck her neck out for them in court, and then they slid it when they testified against her and sent her to jail. Lil Kim's fans were the only ones who deserved her loyalty and protection, but even they trusted the wrong people on occasion. Sometimes it ends in death, but they all end in disgrace. I'm Jake Brennan, and this is Disgraceland.

Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All-Axist member, thank you for supporting the show. We really appreciate it. And if not, you can become a member right now by going to disgracelandpod.com slash membership. Members can listen to every episode of Disgraceland ad-free. Plus, you'll get one brand new exclusive episode every month.

weekly unscripted bonus episodes, special audio collections, and early access to merchandise and events. Visit disgracelampod.com slash membership for details. Rate and review the show and follow us on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook at DisgracelamPod, and on YouTube at YouTube.com slash at disgraceland pod. Rock a roll. When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist,

they take matters into their own hands. I vowed. I will be his last target. He is not going to get away with this. He's going to get what he deserves. We always say that trust your girlfriends. Listen to the girlfriends. Trust me, babe. On the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Your husband is not who you think he is. Your body is not what you thought it was. Your identity is formed by a secret history. I'm Danny Shapiro. And these are just a few. of the stunning stories I'll be exploring on the 14th season of Family Secrets. He kind of shoved me out of the way and said, move.

And he went out the front door and he jumped in a car and drove off. And that was the last time I saw him. Listen to season 14 of Family Secrets starting May 7th on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This season on Dear Chelsea, with me, Chelsea Handler, we have some fantastic guests like Amelia Clark.

When, like, young people come off to me and they want to be an actor or whatever. My first thing is always, can you think of anything else that you can do? Rather be disappointed in. Do that. David O'Yelloo. I love this podcast, whether it's therapy or relationships or religion or sex or addiction or you just go straight for the guts. Dennis Leary, Gaten Matarazzo from Stranger Things, Tana Monjou, Camilla Morone, Carrie Kenny Silver, and more.

Listen to these episodes of Dear Chelsea on the... iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.