rap musician
Personal Information
Born Kimberly Denise Jones, on July 11, 1975, in Brooklyn, NY; daughter of Ruby Mae and Linwood Jones.
Career
Rapper; albums: Hard Core, Undeas/Big Beat/Atlantic, 1996, Notorious K.I.M., Atlantic, 2000. Queen Bee Records, CEO. Actress, 1999- ; television appearances: VIP, 1999, DAG, 2001. Films: She's All That, 1999; Juwanna Mann, 2001; La Bella Mafia, 2003; The Naked Truth, 2005.
Life's Work
When Kimberly Denise Jones teamed up with Notorious B.I.G. in her Brooklyn neighborhood, she became the self-proclaimed "ghetto fabulous" Lil' Kim turned the tables on male-dominated rap. The four-foot-eleven-inch dynamo's hard-core rap songs focused on explicit sexuality long the domain of male rappers. She also turned heads with her bold image donned outrageous outfits that often revealed more than they hid. Although most of her records bore a "Parental Advisory" sticker Kim was a critical popular success scoring number-one hits and garnering lucrative endorsement deals.
From Ghetto to "Ghetto Fabulous"
Kim was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1975 to ruby Mae and Linwood Jones. She was raised in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood, but that changed after her parents split up when she was nine. She bounced back and forth from one parent to the other until she ran away from home at 14. She dropped out of high school and lived with friends and, at times, on the streets.
Lil' Kim and her rapping talents soon were noticed by small-time drug pusher and up-and-coming rapper Christopher Wallace, a.k.a. Biggie Smalls, a.k.a. the Notorious B.I.G. "We lived on the same block in Brooklyn," Kim said of meeting B.I.G. in an interview with Interview magazine. "I always thought he was cute, and when I first started talking to him, I felt like I'd known him for years ... friends of mine said to him, 'You know, Kim knows how to rap.' He was like, 'Please! She's too cute to know how to rap.'" The two also became involved romantically linked, and Kim was shattered when B.I.G. married singer Faith Evans in 1994. His rumored infidelity with Kim, with Kim becoming pregnant and having an abortion, became a source of gossip in the rap community, and inspired a bitter rivalry between Kim and Evans that the two would play out in the gossip columns, on stage, and with their respective record labels.
B.I.G. helped Kim become a member of the Junior M.A.F.I.A. (Junior Masters At Finding Intelligent Attitudes) and start her career. She made her appearance on the group's hit debut single, "Player's Anthem." She also played a big part on the group's debut album, Conspiracy, which entered the top ten of the Billboard 200 in September of 1995. The album made it to number two on the Billboard R&B chart, and the group launched its first major tour, opening shows for Notorious B.I.G. on his U.S. tour. "Biggie thought I was just going to be this little female in the back, this girl he'd put in the group because he loved me," Kim was quoted as saying in her record-company biography. "But when we came out, everyone loved our songs 'Get Money' and 'Player's Anthem,' and we blew up."
Hard Core was Hard Core
Over the next couple of years, Kim honed her style, working with a variety of producers, lending her talents on a number of other artist's releases. She appeared on records by Mona Lisa, the Isley Brothers, and Skin Deep. Her debut album, Hard Core, was the result of her work with producers Sean "Puffy" Combs, High Class, and Jermaine Dupri.
Released in 1996, Hard Core was promoted as bold and provocative. Kim appeared scantily clad in a skimpy bikini, draped in furs on the record cover and in ads promoting the album, and Hard Core debuted at number eleven on the pop charts. It was the highest-ever debut for a female hip-hop artist on the Billboard 200. The first single, a duet with Combs, "No Time," spent nine weeks at number one on the rap charts.
Critics and hard-core rap fans stood up and took notice when Kim released Hard Core. With her raunchy lyrics, and sexual take-no-prisoners attitude, Kim had crossed into territory previously visited only by male rappers. "Kim is a revolutionary figure in the sense that she's a woman who is articulating the same perverted thoughts that men have been rhyming about for years," wrote one critic in CMJ. "Asserting herself sexually like a hip-hop Millie Jackson, Kim's ribald accounts of healthy sexual appetite come off as empowering," wrote another in Time Out.
An Outrageous Diva
Although her lyrics were considered more macho than feminine, Kim's wardrobe was decadent and all woman. She shunned the hip-hop uniform of baggy pants, shirts, and boots, in favor of revealing leather and mink catsuits, rhinestone headpieces, and carefully placed pasties. "I take bits and pieces from everybody," Kim was quoted as saying of her fashion sense in Vibe. "I've always studied the fashion of women who were beautiful and glamorous....A lot of credit goes to my mom as well. She's got a great sense of style," she continued.
Kim's lyrics and style indicated to many that Kim saw herself as a very liberated black woman, and she fully expected her work and image to be accepted by blacks and feminists. She was, however, criticized by some African Americans for donning lavish blonde wigs and wearing blue contact lenses. Some feminists denounced her for exploiting her sexuality and having her breasts enlarged. In an Essence article, writer Akissi Britton in an open letter to Kim, remarked that "feminism is about embracing our power without reducing it to what's between our legs.""I thought women were gonna be behind me," Kim said in an interview with Harper's Bazaar, and added the criticism "discouraged" her.
Where some found criticism, others found praise for Kim. "Her capacity to calculate what you want her to be and then become it--a skill she honed in the streets of Brooklyn, N.Y.--makes her damn near interactive," wrote Robert Marriott in Vibe. "Raunchy, vulnerable, demure. Mae West. Bessie Smith. Lady Godiva. Blue-eyed Barbarella, aqua-haired ghetto mermaid--she's the virtual black girl staring at you from billboards and magazine covers in a dazzling array of guises," he continued. Essence stated that many found Kim's message "empowering."
Notorious B.I.G. Inspired Notorious K.I.M.
On March 9th, 1997, Kim received a blow in her personal life that directly affected her professionally. Notorious B.I.G. was gunned down as he left an event in Los Angeles. "He was everything to me. My father, brother, and mentor," Kim was quoted as saying in her record-company bio. "He would tell me when to go to sleep, when to wake up. It was crazy. Big had a plan for me....He contributed so much to my life--and he still does....I'll always love him with all my heart." Kim wasn't up to recording her own second record that year, but managed to contribute to recordings by Jay-Z, Missy "Misdemeanor" Elliott, Mobb Deep, Funkmaster Flex, and Black Rob.
Kim revisited Combs' own New York City studio, Daddy's House, to record her long-awaited second album, The Notorious K.I.M. Producers "Shaft" and Mario Winans were among the many who lent their skills to the effort. After overseeing the rapper's second album Combs told Vibe, "Kim's a true artist. She's a perfectionist." Kim's perfectionism paid off, and The Notorious K.I.M. debuted at number four and went platinum.
Though brash and blunt on the rest of the album, Kim exposed her vulnerable side on the single "Hold On." On the track's vocals, Kim was joined by her best friend Mary J. Blige. "It's a song a wrote for Big," she said of "Hold On" in The Source. "I could only get through it once. I would always break down and cry." B.I.G.'s name appeared as executive producer in the album's credits and is honored in the album title itself.
Became a Sought-after Star
Kim and Blige met early in Kim's career, when Junior M.A.F.I.A. was opening for Blige. "She taught me always to go with my first instinct and always to be a woman," Kim said of Blige in Interview. "She said, 'Kim, you are a strong, beautiful, and smart woman. You can make your own decisions.'" Kim subsequently contributed to Blige's 1997 release, Share My World, and the two appeared together in a lipstick campaign for MAC Cosmetics. Kim also promoted Candie's shoes and Iceberg jeans.
Kim set her sights beyond making records, and spent much of her time between records working on her career as a crossover star. She made her debuts on the big and small screens in 1999. She appeared on VIP, the TV series starring her pal Pamela Anderson, and showed up in She's All That, which starred teen heartthrob Freddie Prinze, Jr. She launched her own label, Queen Bee Records, of which she is CEO. She has signed fellow Junior M.A.F.I.A member, 'Lil Cease, and executive produced his solo album. Kim made her way into the mainstream spotlight as a presenter at the VH1 Fashion Awards and The Source Awards. She was invited to induct Earth, Wind & Fire into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame with fellow presenters Paul McCartney, Diana Ross, Patti Smith, and John Mellencamp. She appeared on the covers of such magazines as Vibe, The Source, Out, XXL, Genre, Sister 2 Sister, Honey, and Interview.
After the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards, Kim's name was prominent in gossip columns after pop legend Diana Ross acknowledged her with a love tap to her left breast. "People always make a big deal out of nothing," Kim was quoted as saying in her bio of the incident. "Behind stage, she and I kicked it. She was like the most down-to-earth icon I've ever met!"
Rivalry Lead to Shooting
A feud between Lil Kim and Foxy Brown has risen to a level that eerily mimicked the rivalry between slain rappers, Notorious B.I.G. and Tupac Shakur. Neither rapper can remember what started the war, but Kim and Brown have been exchanging heated words--on records and in interviews--for years. Both began as friends but the friendship has dissolved into an on-going feud that continued to enlarge.
Brown recorded a rap that included some "choice" words for Kim on rap duo's Capone-N-Noreaga's song, "Bang Bang." In February of 2001, Kim's entourage and Capone-N-Noreaga's entourage were involved in a shootout that severely injured one person. By the time the police arrived, everyone had fled the scene. Though Kim denied any involvement--even saying she wasn't there, security surveillance caught Kim's limousine slowing down to pick up some of her entourage after the shooting. Brown, who was not at the scene, tried to set up a meeting in the weeks after the shooting. There was no response from Kim.
Lil' Kim came out with the album La Bella Mafia in 2003, for which she won the Source Hip-Hop Music Award for female artist of the year. Then in August of 2004 Lil' Kim announced the startup of her personal designer watch label, Royalty, which will be manufactured by celebrity jeweler Jacob Arabo. On a down side, in March of 2005 Lil' Kim was convicted on federal perjury charges regarding that shooting incident in Manhattan in 2001. She was acquitted of the more serious charge of obstruction of justice, but she still received a sentence of one year and one day in jail plus a $50,000 fine. She began her sentence on September 19. She spent her days before going into jail finishing up her album, The Naked Truth, and filming a few videos to go with it. Much of the album dealt with her feelings surrounding her upcoming imprisonment, but she put a brave face on all of it. She even mentions Martha Stewart, who herself just recently got out of jail, in one of her songs. The album was released in late September. People magazine said of it, "The Naked Truth is hardly perfect; it's too long and has too much filler. But it sure does leave you waiting to hear what she comes up with when she gets out of prison."
In the midst of all this, Kim's goal was to become an entrepreneur and household name, according to an interview in Ebony. "I want the world to know that I can do anything," she said. "I'm versatile. ...I want people in India to know me. I want people in China to know me. I love people. That's my main reason for working so hard and wanting to get there. ...I see how much people love me, are empowered by me, and I know God has a reason for me being who I am," she concluded.
Awards
Platinum record for sales over one million, 1997 and 2000; won two Soul Train/Lady of Soul awards; Source Hip-Hop Music Award for female artist of the year, 2003.
Works
Selected discography
- (as solo artist)
- Hard Core, Undeas/Big Beat/Atlantic, 1996.
- Notorious K.I.M., Atlantic, 2000.
- (with Junior M.A.F.I.A.)
- Conspiracy, Atlantic, 1995.
- La Bella Mafia, Atlantic, 2003.
- The Naked Truth, Atlantic, 2005.
Selected EP's, singles- Player's Anthem, Undeas/Atlantic, 1995.
- No Time, Atlantic, 1996.
- Not Tonight, Atlantic, 1997.
- Hold On, Atlantic, 2000.
- How Many Licks, Atlantic, 2000.
- Videos
- #2 X-Rated, 1997.
- Best of Lil' Kim, 2000.
- Guest Appearances
- High School High (original soundtrack), Various Artists, 1996.
- Sunset Park (original soundtrack), (with Junior M.A.F.I.A.),1996.
- Share My World, Mary J. Blige, 1997.
- Money Talks (original soundtrack), Various Artists, 1997.
- My Way, Usher, 1997.
- Chef Aid: The South Park Album, Various Artists, 1998.
- Jermaine Dupri Presents: Life in 1472, Jermaine Dupri, 1998.
- Hell City, Hell, Various Artists, 1998.
- Forever, Puff Daddy, 1999.
- Tunnel, Funkmaster Flex & Big Kap, 1999.
- Wonderful World of Cease A Leo, Lil' Cease, 1999.
Selected filmography- She's All That, 1999.
- Juwanna Mann, 2001.
- Notable TV appearances
- VIP, "Mao Better Blues," 1999.
Further Reading
Periodicals
- Ebony, October 2000, p. 184.
- Entertainment Weekly, July 14, 2000, p. 77.
- Essence, October 2001, p. 112.
- Harper's Bazaar, April 2000, p. 196.
- Newsweek, September 26, 2005, p. 56.
- People, September 26, 2005, p. 86; October 24, 2005, p. 49.
- Time, March 12, 2001, p. 101.
Other- ABCNews.com, abcnews.go.com/wire/Entertainment/ap20031014_474.html (October 14, 2003).
- E! Online, www.eonline.com (March 18, 2005).
- E! Online, www.eonline.com (July 8, 2005).
- CNN.com, www.cnn.com/2005/LAW/07/06/lil.kim.sentence.ap/index.html (July 8, 2005).
- USA Today, www.usatoday.com/life/people/2004-08-11-lilkim-watches_x.htm (August 11, 2004).
- Additional information was obtained at All-Music Guide, http://www.allmusic.com, Atlantic Records, http://www.atlantic-records.com, EOnline, http://www.eonline.com, Electronic Urban Report, http://www.eurweb.com, Internet Movie Database, http://www.imdb.com, and Wall of Sound, http://www.wallofsound.go.com/artists/lilkim/home.html.
— Brenna Sanchez and Ashyia N. Henderson
