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Lil' Kim’s Response To Jermaine Dupri’s 'Strippers Rapping' Commentary Deserves A Round Of Applause

Period.

Fresh off her big moment of taking home BET’s I Am Hip-Hop legacy award, Lil' Kim stopped by Genius’ headquarters to chop it up about her latest studio offering, 9, with Rob Markman on their latest episode of For the Record.

RELATED: Lil' Kim Was A Sex-Positive, Black Feminist MC Ahead Of Her Time

  • The Brooklyn legend took a look back at her reign as the undisputed Queen Bee of Hip-Hop, from her days of leading Biggie’s Junior M.A.F.I.A bratpack to breaking out as a formidable MC in her own right.

    Doubling back to her recent comeback and putting out music in 2019, Kim was quick to shower Miami rap phenoms the City Girls with praise. The ladies recently teamed up for “Found You” off her newest studio album.

    “I always wanted to work with the City Girls because we were kind of cool,” she told Markman. “I was like, ‘This is perfect.’ I hit up Miami. She was like, ‘Let’s do it.’ I love her for that too because it was no hesitation.”

     

  • The rap icon also shared this one wish she could’ve done with her music

    “I think that even just music today is fun and I wish I had a chance to make fun records because I was on some ‘I’m moving anything out of my way that’s trying to stop me’ [mindset],” Kim acknowledged.

    “We were fly gangstas. So we had to talk that fly s**t and we had to talk that gangsta s**t. Music now is so fun. Sometimes, you don’t want to have to think too hard. You wanna just vibe. I like vibe songs. I like what’s going on.”

  • As the conversation was winding down, Mark touched on Jermaine Dupri’s polarizing “strippers rapping” comments about women rappers, which drew the ire Cardi B and Doja Cat, and prompted some strong pushback on social media. The 45-year-old said that she felt the So So Def mogul didn’t mean to malign anyone’s music or talk down to women rappers flaunting their sensuality.

     

  • “I think he was saying I love y'all sexy woman talking that stripper-sexy-money talk. But I want to also hear some of the women spitting hardcore rap. I think he just said it wrong, maybe,” the Hard Core rapper said.

  • She did get one thing off her chest that she didn’t agree that she’s seen going on in the hip-hop community today: fans of old-school hip-hop looking down on the new wave of rap

    “In my mind, I love what’s going on today,” she said at the 50-minute mark. “I don’t agree with people who are from before the era of even me dissing the music now. I hate it. I also don't agree with the people in the genre now, like the artists out now, disrespecting the reason they got here. I hate that. Y'all need to come to a happy medium.”

    She continued: “At the end of the day, the person who knows how to do both is the mega superstar. For me, I just wish that everybody could appreciate people’s art and music, period. I don’t [care] what era you from. I don’t [care] what kind of music it is, appreciate it because that one song could change somebody’s life.”

    And that’s on period.

     

  • Watch the rest of the 53-minute interview in full below to see what Lil' Kim had to say about working with Biggie and her impact on hip-hop. 

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