I almost posted this playlist last fall when Lil Kim released her 9 album and received the Icon award at the BET Hip Hop Awards. But it feels like Lil Kim has been more talked about in the last couple weeks than she was then, so I might as well post it now.

Lil Kim deep album cuts (Spotify playlist):

1. Back Stabbers w/ Junior M.A.F.I.A.
2. Queen Bitch
3. M.A.F.I.A. Land
4. Big Momma Thang f/ Lil Cease and Jay-Z
5. Drugs
6. Fuck You f/ Trife and Larceny
7. Lil Drummer Boy f/ Cee-Lo and Redman)
8. Suck My Dick
9. Custom Made (Give It To You)
10. Revolution f/ Grace Jones and Lil Cease
11. Don't Mess With Me
12. Came Back For You
13. Get In Touch With Us f/ Styles P.
14. (When Kim Say) Can You Hear Me Now? f/ Missy Elliott
15. Can't Fuck With Queen Bee f/ Governor and Shelene Thomas with Full Force
16. Durty
17. We Don't Give A Fuck f/ Bun B and Twista
18. Kronik f/ Snoop Dogg
19. Bag

Track 1 from Conspiracy by Junior M.A.F.I.A. (1995)
Tracks 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 from Hard Core (1996)
Tracks 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 from The Notorious K.I.M. (2000)
Tracks 12, 13, 14 and 15 from La Bella Mafia (2003)
Tracks 16, 17 and 18 from The Naked Truth (2005)
Track 19 from 9 (2019)

Obviously Hard Core is a classic from front to back, and outside of the official singles campaign for the album, "Big Momma Thang" and "Queen Bitch" are club/mix show staples. I remember the first time I heard of Lil Kim was actually when I was reading an issue of Rolling Stone in '96 and there was an article about how a lot of DJs were flipping over the "No Time" single and playing the B-side, "Queen Bitch." The song's clean version title obviously inspired Kim's 'Queen Bee' nickname, which was almost the title of Hard Core, and the song was flipped into Mary J. Blige's top 40 hit with Kim, "I Can Love You," a year later. I kinda forgot just how much Kim repped the Queen Bee thing and called her crew the Beehive, way before that became Beyonce's thing.

Biggie's pen deserves plenty of the credit for the quality of Hard Core, but the really impressive thing is that Kim kept the quality of her albums pretty high even after Biggie died. The first 3 albums are full of good shit, and The Naked Truth is just a small step down from those, which makes The Source stamping it 5 mics kind of silly. Unfortunately, 9 brought Kim's batting average way down, it's just not a good album at all. I hope she drops the AutoTune and gets back to rapping like she used to someday, though. I think Missy has the best discography of any woman in hip hop but Kim is probably not far behind at 2nd.

I remember hearing "Don't Mess With Me" and "Came Back For You" for the first time on Kanye West's early mixtapes where he'd include a lot of the songs he produced for other artists. I really like "Came Back For You" and didn't realize until much later that it got a video and was nominated for a Grammy, which surprised me since it never charted or got a proper single release. Kim got a lot of great production on these albums -- as someone who never thought Scott Storch was a great rap producer, he did 3 of his best tracks for Kim ("Can You Hear Me Now?" and the singles "Lighters Up" and "Thug Luv"). And doing songs with Grace Jones and Full Force before that kind of thing was hip, Kim really was ahead of the curve in a lot of ways besides just the obvious ways she influenced a lot of other artists.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 21, 2020 at 8:25 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.