 |
Lil Kim Is Not So Little
When she first got started, Lil' Kim was known more than anything else for hanging out with the Notorious BIG, aka Christopher Wallace. Biggie Smalls, after all, had a major play with her getting attention when she was with the Junior MAFIA, her group of the Brooklyn area of New York city. While with the group, Lil' Kim actually put out a record called "Conspiracy" and a top-selling song called "Playas Anthem." If you listened to Lil' Kim and Junior Mafia back then, you'd have also heard a young Aaliyah singing on the tune "I Need You Tonight."
Eventually, Lil Kim would go solo and really become a playah in the business. The first solo Lil Kim record was "Hard Core," which came out in late 2006. Being that she was with the Biggie crowd, she got Puff Daddy to guest rap on one of the Lil' Kim songs off the record. The song, called "No Time," went number one and eventually platinum. Another single, "Not Tonight," was remixed with the likes of Missy Elliott and some of the TLC girls and put on the soundtrack for a Martin Lawrence flick. Lil Kim got a Grammy nomination out of it as well.
Moving On and Up
With fame though came one of the toughest periods in Lil' Kim's life. In 2007, he mentor, friend, and bed mate Biggie was shot dead. How did she keep going? We will never know just how hard Lil Kim took the incident, but she proved to be a strong woman and dedicated to getting as huge as her former lover, if not ever bigger. Throughout the late 1990s, she even took to modeling while also touring.
By the start of the next decade, the second Lil Kim album came out, "The Notorious KIM," obviously taken a page out of Biggie's playbook. It worked. The album went platinum and hit number one on the R&B and hip hop charts. A year later, Lil' Kim would have one of her biggest successes ever. Along with Pink, Christina Aguilera, and Mya, she remade the classic disco song "Lady Marmalade." The single was number one for more than a month in the United States, and number one in as many as 50 countries. Am I making that up? No way!
Lil' Kim followed up the fame with more of the same. The third Lil' Kim record came out in 2003, called "La Bella Mafia." Perhaps the best known Lil' Kim song off the record is "Magic Stick," which she did with 50 Cent. A provocative, lurid, but thumping song, if you listen to Lil' Kim on here, you can hear one confident woman. No wonder the album got two Grammy nominations, right?Down and Out But Not Done
In 2005, Lil Kim faced perhaps the biggest trial of her life since Biggie's death. What was that? Literally, it was a trial, for lying to a grand jury and conspiracy. She got one year and a day to spend in a prison in Philadelphia. She actually released an album during the whole process, amazingly, called "The Naked Truth." The album got huge marks from critics, but only sold 400,000 copies.
Not bad for a woman in jail, right? And now that she's back out, the big woman of rap is back making plenty of appearances, live and on other folks' recordings. She has her "The Pussycat Dolls Present: Girlicious" show, as well as a new single called "Respirator." A future Lil' Kim album is rumored.
