Tragic Details About Lil' Kim
This article contains references to domestic violence and child abuse.
As every fan of the legendary rapper can tell you, many of the most tragic details about Lil' Kim are right there in her music. Though the legendary hip-hop superstar has consciously attempted to keep her personal identity — as Kimberly Denise Jones — separate from her gutsy performance persona as Queen Bee, her dual identities have arguably found a shared space within her bold, brassy, and often confessional verses.
Speaking to The Washington Post, Kim once admitted that "most of the things" she talks about in her lyrics are true. And while they may sometimes be harrowing to hear, she was well aware that many other women could identify with her experiences. "I talk about the things that women have gone through that they don't think I've gone through," she said, referencing some of her heartbreaking romantic agonies and dangerous life experiences as examples.
That being said, hearing these experiences within the context of a rhyme is one thing, but it's quite another to understand the full reality behind a lyric. These are tragic details about Lil' Kim.
A lifetime of abuse left her with low self-esteem
Given her position as the OG Queen Bee of '90s hip hop — she of the nastiest, boldest verses — Lil' Kim has always given the impression of being a confident woman, impervious to insecurity. Though the "Hard Core" MC knows how to front, she's also suffered from chronic self-esteem issues her entire life, stemming from various incidents of abuse.
As a child, Kim grew up in "an all-white neighborhood" where the rapper was made to feel ugly by "little blond girls" who teased her, according to The Washington Post. That kind of bullying will destroy the confidence of any young person, and for Kim, it sadly proved to be the start of a pattern of abuse that further ruined her self-worth. As she got older, men would tell her she "wasn't pretty enough," including the ones she was dating. "To this day when someone says I'm cute, I can't see it," she told Newsweek. "I don't see it no matter what anybody says."
Thankfully, Kim found some power within her rap persona, which she described as being "a character I use to sell my records." She told The Washington Post that getting to look "like a movie star" in "expensive clothes" helped her to deal with her low self-esteem — but it didn't fix the issue. "I think doing photo shoots and seeing all the people respond to me has helped," she said. "[But] I still don't see what they see."
Lil' Kim had tragic reasons for getting plastic surgery
In an interview with Newsweek, Lil' Kim suggested that the way she'd been mistreated by men had directly led to her need for cosmetic procedures, stating that boyfriends "always cheated" on her with "European-looking" women. Being betrayed for these women subsequently left her feeling like she couldn't compete and that "being a regular Black girl wasn't good enough."
However, a few years later, the former Junior M.A.F.I.A. member appeared to have changed her reasoning for getting plastic surgery. Though the "Big Momma Thang" rapper admitted during a 2005 interview with Hot 97's Angie Martinez that she was "excessive" with some procedures, Kim also denied that she did it because of "low self-esteem." The rapper sadly confirmed, however, that one particular surgery performed on her nose was done after an abusive ex-boyfriend violently attacked her and broke it.
Aside from that one necessary "fix," Kim reasoned that she was purposefully striving to achieve a certain beauty standard for herself — and it may have been an impossible one. "I think I did it 'cause I was a little too vain at the time," she said. "I was trying to be perfect. I'm a perfectionist." Whatever the reason for Kim's continued surgeries, there's no denying that it really isn't anybody else's business but hers. As she told Newsweek, at the end of the day, "It was to make me look the way I wanted to look. It's my body."
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.
She endured a difficult childhood
Tragically, Lil' Kim's childhood wasn't exactly the most nurturing for the young star-to-be, either. Long before she found strength as part of Brooklyn's Junior M.A.F.I.A. hip-hop group, Kim admitted to having a deeply troubled relationship with her father when she was growing up, receiving disapproval from the family patriarch when she was as young as 8. "It was like I could do nothing right," she told Newsweek, "Everything about me was wrong — my hair, my clothes, just me."
Adding to the strained relationship was violent behavior that Kim alleged her father committed against her mom. "There was a great deal of verbal abuse," she confessed to The Washington Post. "And there was one time ... when my mother had black eyes. My father told people she had fallen." Despite their history, Kim stepped up to care for her estranged father when he started to show early signs of Alzheimer's disease, as reported by OK! in 2012. Noting her religious beliefs, she told the magazine, "No matter what, I'm always going to be there for my family."
Unfortunately, Kim's troubled childhood didn't end there. During her interview with The Washington Post, the rapper confessed to having endured sexual abuse at a family member's house when she was a child, but of not wanting to "dwell on the pain" of the experience. As she grew up, Kim would further struggle to find places of safety that she could call home.
If you or someone you know may be the victim of child abuse, please contact the Childhelp National Child Abuse Hotline at 1-800-4-A-Child (1-800-422-4453) or contact their live chat services.
She spent part of her teen years living on the streets
Lil' Kim's parents eventually separated in the early '80s, and it made for an unstable living situation for the rapper, her mom, and her older brother. According to The Washington Post, the three "relied on the kindness of friends for shelter," but their options soon fell short, and Kim had to go live with her dad. "I was basically living out of the trunk of my car," Kim's mom told the newspaper. "So I let Kim go to live with her father."
Kim's relationship with her father was so volatile, however, that the rapper moved out and found herself on the streets at age 14. There, she found herself caught up in doing whatever "it took to survive," as she told Newsweek, and that often involved doing "errands for drug dealers" and "whatever it took to make ends meet." Though the teenager was headstrong and smart, living such a vulnerable existence meant enduring violence and conflict — with nobody to rely on but herself.
"I've fought a lot on the streets because I had to," Kim told the Los Angeles Times. "When you're on the streets, people feel like they can do anything to you because you've got nothing and don't have anybody." She may have learned how to fight to ensure her safety on the streets, but she'd sadly continue to endure other forms of violence even when she found more stability.
Lil' Kim's relationship with Biggie Smalls was reportedly violent
At 17, Lil' Kim's living situation would lead to her being discovered by Biggie Smalls (via Capital XTRA), and the legendary rapper — better known as The Notorious B.I.G. — was to become her friend and lover. The relationship, though fruitful for the young artist in many ways, wasn't the healthiest. In 2017, legendary music producer Jermaine Dupri even alleged while in conversation with "Drink Champs" that Smalls pulled a gun on Kim during a recording session for the Usher song "Just Like Me," which featured the female MC.
When asked whether the incident happened to get an upset Kim to record her verse, Dupri responded, "To let her know he'd kill her." Kim herself has confirmed that her relationship with the late legendary rapper was violent, and even described one experience to "The Diamond K Show" in which Smalls choked her until she lost consciousness.
Their relationship was reportedly so unstable that in 1996 she made the difficult decision to terminate a pregnancy when she discovered she was expecting Smalls' child. "I already knew the kind of relationship that Biggie and I had," she told The Source, "and I knew that [having a child] was something that couldn't take place" (via Style Rave). Hearing Kim speak of her former lover, it's clear she continues to hold a great deal of affection for the man in spite of the more troubling aspects of their romance.
If you or someone you know is dealing with domestic abuse, you can call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1−800−799−7233. You can also find more information, resources, and support at their website.
Biggie's death meant dealing with the loss of a mentor, friend, and lover
In 1997, Lil' Kim suffered an irrevocable and shocking loss when Biggie Smalls was killed in a drive-by shooting in Los Angeles (via Rolling Stone). As the rapper recounted in interviews following the murder, Biggie's death impacted her in multiple ways. The hip-hop impressario and leader of Junior M.A.F.I.A. was Kim's lover, but he was also her friend and mentor and a key factor in helping to shape her success.
Noting how "it's not getting any easier to let go" a year after his death, Kim told Rolling Stone she remained grateful for the gifts he shared with her. "Biggie easily accounts for 85% of my career," she said. Subsequently, the hip-hop star poured her grief into her second album and titled it, "The Notorious K.I.M.," in tribute to the late rapper. Working through heartache in an industry where prominent echoes of Biggie were everywhere proved to be more difficult for Kim than she'd anticipated. It forced her to grow up, and it also pushed her to evolve her practice from that of an artist to one of an entrepreneur.
"Working on the album without Biggie was the hardest thing I ever had to do," she told the Los Angeles Times. "You can't imagine what I've gone through working on this album. I had to take on all the responsibilities that I never, ever imagined ... I just wanted to be an artist."
Was Lil' Kim really in charge of her super sexual image?
Though Biggie Smalls undoubtedly helped with some aspects of Lil' Kim's career, just how much was Queen Bee actually in control of? Since her hyper-sexual breakout with the 1996 album "Hard Core," people have often questioned Kim's agency when it comes to her provocative persona.
In a profile on the rapper by The Washington Post, for instance, writer and critic Asha Bandele argued that Kim was "just like every little abused girl" that she knew growing up, and that the rapper ultimately wasn't "in control" of her caricature persona, while Voletta Wallace — Smalls' mom — countered that Kim needed to allow audiences "to see a human being" and not a sex symbol. What was holding her back from doing so?
In an excerpt from the book "The Motherlode," Pitchfork reported Lance "Un" Rivera — who co-founded Undeas Recordings with Smalls — as having a consistent "strategy" when shaping Kim's image as the "side chick" and not "the wife." "It's all driven by ... the male ego, the fantasy," he said. "It's not about love. It's about being nasty." Men may have controlled her look, but they couldn't deny her voice. "She wrote the majority of the album," Rivera said, stating that her biggest hits were all her own.
Sadly, there'd be another element to her persona that was definitely all her — and it'd come to overshadow her career.
Lil' Kim has had major beef with other rappers
Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown have been engaged in a seemingly everlasting feud. As XXL noted, the two ferocious female MCs came from similar beginnings. The two briefly attended the same high school together, and their impressive debut albums were dropped within a week of one another. By all accounts, they seemed friendly ... until they weren't. "All of a sudden, they just weren't cool," Brown's cousin, music producer Clark Kent, told XXL about the mysterious fallout.
Criticisms subsequently bounded back and forth between the two in the form of several diss tracks, with Lil' Kim firing shots from songs like "The Notorious K.I.M." and Lil Cease's "Play Around," and Brown sniping back with tracks like Capone-N-Noreaga's "Bang Bang" (via The Things). The rivalry culminated in a violent "gun battle" between their respective entourages, which The New York Times suggested "stemmed from a feud" between the two. It all served to distract from the legacy of both artists — and sadly, such squabbles didn't end there.
Enter Nicki Minaj and her array of suspiciously Kim-esque looks. According to the NME, Kim accused Minaj of swiping her image and artwork for her own — an allegation that was hard to argue against when Kim shared some visual receipts on Twitter. Minaj appeared to diss Kim on the track "Roman's Revenge" (via MTV) and Kim maturely retaliated with some artwork appearing to depict Minaj's decapitated head (via Entertainment Weekly). Women fighting other women still makes great bank, it seems.
She was found guilty of perjury in 2013
The gunfight said to have stemmed from Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown's feud? It had consequences. Four years following the incident, Kim was found guilty of "lying to investigators and to a federal grand jury" with MTV News reporting that Kim made different claims to what the evidence proved. The incident saw her co-manager Damion Butler and Junior M.A.F.I.A. member Suif "Gutta" Jackson later confessing to firing on rap group Capone-N-Noreaga outside New York station Hot 97.
Kim claimed Butler wasn't with her at the time and she couldn't ID a photo of a man thought to be involved, who turned out to be Jackson. Witness testimony and security camera footage suggested otherwise. She was later charged to a year and a day in prison and fined $50,000, according to Billboard — a small price to pay considering she actually faced up to 20 years imprisonment.
Luckily, Kim saw the bright side to the whole experience and recounted during MTV's "RapFix Live" how she was "greeted with open arms by a lot of wonderful, wonderful girls" in prison. "I met a lot of good people in there who are still my friends to this day," she said. Notably, she also used the experience to wind down from what she described as being "nonstop" work prior to heading in. "I never slept ... for two months straight," she explained. "When I got there, I kind of just collapsed" (via MTV News).
Despite all her success, she reportedly ran into severe financial problems
A few years after serving time and returning home, Lil' Kim faced a new obstacle. According to court documents acquired by The Blast, the rapper filed for Chapter 13 bankruptcy in 2018 and was reported to have owed her creditors $4 million, with Kim apparently owing "$1,845,451 in back taxes alone." The website added that the rapper's yearly income had been in steady decline since 2016, with another report from The Blast suggesting her house was set to be auctioned off to cover outstanding debt.
A year later, thankfully, Queen Bee appeared to be firmly on top of her finances, with The Blast reporting that court documents showed Kim asking a federal judge to dismiss her bankruptcy case. According to the website, the rapper filed for bankruptcy to save her New Jersey mansion from foreclosure — and it worked. By July 2019, Kim's bankruptcy case was officially dismissed, with the rapper proudly demonstrating that she had her Benjamins in order and was getting on top of her repayments.
According to Celebrity Net Worth, as of 2021, Kim had a net worth of $500,000. It's a comparatively slim figure for a woman of such prominence and influence, particularly when considering that a rapper like Nicki Minaj — who arguably owes a great deal to the influential "Hard Core" MC — has a net worth said to be in the ballpark of $100 million, according to Celebrity Net Worth.