“If I Told You Once, I Told You Twice”: Why Lil' Kim Belongs in the Black Feminist Canon
Lil’ Kim made me the feminist I am today.
It was 1996. I was a sixth grader at Welch Middle School in Houston, Texas. A time where there was very little female representation in hip-hop, and men’s music dominated with themes of hustlin’, sex, alcohol, money, designer labels and women. It never occurred to me that women could also rap about the same things with the same confidence, swag, and entertainment value as their male counterparts.
That’s until I saw the video for Lil’ Kim’s debut single, “No Time.” I could sense a shift happening. Something that would change the way I listened to music. So, when Erin, a girl in my Social Studies class, came to school with a copy of Kim’s CD, Hard Core, and was willing to let me borrow it, I couldn’t resist.
As soon as I put it in my portable player, I was hooked. My connection to the music moved past the beats and the catchy hooks. It was more than her sexual lyrics. It was her confidence in doing and saying what male rappers had been doing for years and doing it much better. Kim’s emergence signified a shifting of the tides, a way for Black women to reclaim their agency and power. I didn’t know it then, but Lil’ Kim was one of my first exposures to feminism in action.
Scholar and author of Black Feminist Thought, Patricia Hill Collins, tells us that dominant culture uses controlling and oppressive images of Black women to justify their discrimination and injustices towards us. According to Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought supports women reclaiming their agency and defining their own experiences. Whether it be through the showcase of the collective lived experiences of Black women or by sharing those experiences to empower Black women, Black Feminism is essential to overcoming the systemic racism and misogyny that attempt to oppress us. To me, that’s exactly what Lil’ Kim’s presence, lyrics and success in a male-dominated industry have done.
Some would argue that Kim’s provocative lyrics and revealing clothes during her peak only reinforce negative stereotypical images of Black women, but in my eyes, her persona, bars and outfits put her in the ranks of bell hooks, Audrey Lorde and Nikki Giovanni. If we compare the qualities of these iconic thought-leaders to Lil’ Kim – fearless, truth-telling and radical -she has established herself as a modern-day introspection of Black women in today’s misogynistic society. These women used their words as a tool for liberation. So did Lil’ Kim.
Nearly 30 years after Hard Core debuted, that sixth grader from Houston has written a book and published several peer-reviewed articles, most of which are rooted in Black Feminism, which, for me, began the first time I listened to the album. Her thumbprint can be seen in today’s artists who weren’t even born the first time she rapped, “Nuthin' make a woman feel better, than Berettas and Amarettas, butter leathers and mad cheddars,” which is a testament to her groundbreaking career, making her legacy undeniable. So today, a few days shy of Lil’ Kim’s 52nd birthday, I want to give her her flowers. Not just for providing the soundtrack for my adolescence, but for showing me how my work can be feminism in action.
- Signed, that sixth grade budding feminist from Houston