Lil’ Kim’s Hard Core (1996) and the Embodied Male Voice: Reclamation of the Black Woman’s Erotic Power in Hip Hop
In her debut album Hard Core (1996), Lil’ Kim flips hip hops age-old tradition of using the disembodied Black female voice, often utilized to signify a rapper’s masculine virility, by powering her album through the inclusion of sonically recognizable male voices. With features from Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s foremost male members, including canonical figures of rap like Notorious B.I.G., who epitomizes phallic power and machismo, even Biggie can’t resist Kim’s erotic prowess. Contrary to the work of her male comrades, in Hard Core (1996), Lil’ Kim incorporates well known, embodied male voices to transgress the patriarchal roots of this hip hop tradition. Creating a universe of her own titillating invention, a space where feminine erotic power reigns, the features on Hard Core by popular male rappers’ positions men, instead of women, as mere love objects in the music. A womanist rejection of misogynoir in hip hop but not an outright rejection of men, throughout Hard Core (1996), Lil’ Kim reclaims both her erotic power and sexual agency. Most impressively, she accomplishes this by using the utmost popular male voices in hip hop in such a way that they recognize Kim’s ownership and control of these erotic domains. They can’t get Lil’ Kim out of their minds or off their tongues, and across Hard Core (1996), these men give voice to their own patriarchal contradictions.
The disembodied Black female voice is a hallmark feature of hip hop. Repeatedly emerging on records produced by male artists, the voice of the Black woman commonly functions to signify the erotic appeal of men, or more generally, to lend credence to the notion of phallic and patriarchal power. On his album Take Care (2011), Drake opens his track “Marvins Room” with the voice of a Black woman. The nameless female voice on the phone not only lacks embodiment, but she is in dialogue with no one but herself. Although her voice is used to construct intimacy, despite the incorporation of her vocality, the narrative “Marvins Room” constructs lacks context, consent, and her active participation (Hamilton). Drake’s tormented vulnerability is a byproduct of this woman’s work, and despite her lack of embodiment, her “flesh” (Spillers 67) can only be imagined as mere love object, or rather, former love object. This is a different form of misogynoir according to Katherine St. Asaph (2013). The frequent use of the disembodied Black female voice in the contents of men’s hip hop reduces women to “props” in a male-told narrative (Flores 17); and these accounts often detail sexual and romantic experiences, where women’s pleasures and subjectivity are wholly silenced.
Lil’ Kim is keenly aware of the repeated use of the Black female voice to signify phallic power, in fact at times, she has been the orator of these very verses (Players Anthem, 1995). Perhaps emerging from this unique experience as a Black woman in the male-dominated commercial hip hop industry, across Hard Core (1996), Lil’ Kim deliberately utilizes the male voice in a similar manner as the disembodied Black feminine voice. Flipping this gendered tradition on its head, Lil’ Kim’s incorporation of the male voice is fundamentally transformative because she contextualizes the male subjectivities that emerge throughout the album. Incorporating various skits and interludes across Hard Core (1996), Lil’ Kim offers a sonic space for men to reveal themselves; and their testimonies serve to bolster her womanist claims: “Beside every man is a bad girl (No Time).”
Similar to bell hooks notion of the “oppositional gaze,” Lil’ Kim effectively constructs an oppositional sonic experience, with its roots in a womanist politic (hooks). Although Kim’s hip hop womanism cannot be offered without contention, her music validates the strength and capaciousness of Black womanhood without foreclosing the possibility of loving, “sexually and/or non-sexually,” individual Black men (Walker). But this love ought to come with critique. For example, although Lil’ Kim speaks truth to the pleasures of the male gaze and men’s propensity to ogle at her, her work simultaneously calls men out for their repeated denial of her erotic power. In the first moments of Hard Core (1996), an unidentified man saunters into an adult movie theater. He orders a small popcorn, a large order of butter, and lots of napkins — he’s going to see Lil’ Kim on the big screen (Intro in A-Minor). Approaching climax, he erupts: “Kim! Kim! Work it b — — !” and she begins to get into her “Big Momma Thang.” As a listener progresses further into Lil’ Kim’s debut album, the male voices featured on her records become more and more discernible. Not only do random dudes around ‘Bed-Stuy’ want Kimberly Jones, but Biggie Smalls himself is stuck on Kim too. On the interlude track “Take It!” Junior M.A.F.I.A. members Trife, Biggie, and Lil’ Cease marvel at the fact that Biggie was able to “bag Lil’ Kim (Genius).” You can begin to understand why folks call her the “Queen Bee.” Even in a cadre of hip hop’s most notable men, fantasies of Lil’ Kim mark the pinnacle of sexual escapade.
Through her command of the male voice on her album, Lil’ Kim’s sexual and erotic prowess cannot be denied. She manipulates men’s voices as puppet master on each record, dictating how men, and arguably hip hop’s greatest rapper of all time will be imagined. Again, on the interlude track “Take It!” Biggie and Cease give voice to misogynist, objectifying claims about women. Together, they giggle about the women they will sexually conquer, “the little short one with the fat a — ,” or the other woman they want, “that one right there, with the ponytail (Take It!). The men of Junior M.A.F.I.A. are common men, fantasizing about the sexual acts they can coerce a woman into through their perceived phallic power. But if Biggie lusts for Kim in the same manner, he’s be making a big mistake she forewarns. For if he were to overlook her erotic power, by the eighth track on the album, “Scheamin’,” Kim and her girls discuss setting up Notorious B.I.G. in order to run his pockets. In the depths of Hard Core (1996) women use their erotic capacities to get what they need from men, whether that be money, material things, or sexual pleasure. If these things are a man’s game, well hell, Lil’ Kim has beat them at their own craft, and in the process, legitimizes a woman’s place in erotic domains, on her own terms.
The erotic possibilities that the disembodied Black woman’s voice engenders in the work of male rappers can also be translated across gendered-lines. This is a fundamental claim Lil’ Kim makes in Hard Core (1996): that sexual liberation is not a gendered privilege. According to an article in Nylon Magazine interrogating the legacies of Lil’ Kim’s debut album, Hard Core (1996) is an essential womanist text because it occasions a necessary question: “Is a feminist not someone who strives for equality on all fronts — including in the bedroom (Bryant)?” On “Not Tonight” a chorus of women declare the primacy of their pleasure, singing, “I don’t want d — — tonight/ Eat my p — — right.” Demanding thoughtful attention, and correction of the gendered orgasm gap in heteronormative sexual acts, Kim tells her male love object all about his inability to satisfy her desires. She raps on:
“I’ll pass, n — — the d — — was trash/ If sex was record sales you would be double glass/ The only way you seein’ me, is if you eatin’ me (Not Tonight).”
Using the language of Joan Morgan, Lil’ Kim’s performances throughout Hard Core (1996) are not your “foremother’s feminism (59).” This new kind of womanism, born of the hip hop generation, embraces the domains of the sexual and erotic, and oftentimes these realms occasion an appreciation or desire for men, by women. In many ways, Hard Core (1996) is a musical meditation on a question posed in When the Chickenheads Come Home to Roost: “Can you be a good feminist and admit out loud that there are things you kinda dig about patriarchy (Morgan 57)?” Like sex, or male touch, and the physical company of a man. Let it be known, Lil’ Kim does not need a man: “See, that’s the difference, between me and other b — — — ,” she proclaims, “they f — — to get they riches, I f — — to bust a n — , Lil’ Kim not a slut (F — — You).” Although her album validates the reasons why a woman may pine for a man and his presence, a frequent reason being the desire for sexual pleasure, Hard Core (1996) does not let men off the hook for their failure to reciprocate love and their enactment of harm (Morgan 55). In fact, Lil’ Kim allows her male features to give voice to their own contradictions. Sometimes denigrating her and oftentimes objectifying her flesh, on their verses, Kim allows the men featured on her album to exemplify the very reasons she decides to use them for pleasure. Embodied male voices testify on their inability to be all that Lil’ Kim needs, and as the logical conclusion of this work, it becomes no wonder why Lil’ Kim has come to use men for what she wants.
Arguably the most popular track from the album, on “Crush on You,” Notorious B.I.G. leads the chorus while Lil’ Cease raps over the remaining verses of the track. Across the entire record, Lil’ Kim repeatedly utters only one word (unless you listen to the remix, which features a full verse from Lil’ Kim). An interesting way of negotiating space on her own album, Kim allows Biggie and Cease to air out their own dirty laundry for themselves. In the mesmerizing hook of the song, Biggie admits Lil’ Kim’s girlfriends are right about what they say about him: “He’s a slut, he’s a hoe, he’s a freak/ Got a different girl every day of the week (Crush on You).” The single-word affirmation Kim voices across the track’s chorus is “true.” The proof is in the embodied male voice, Biggie Smalls has admitted to his womanizing tendencies Kim has no time for. All she needs to say on this record, is “true.”
According to Pitchfork, while recording Hard Core (1996) Lil’ Kim was facing an onslaught of struggle in her personal life, Ultimately, it is this tumultuous moment in her life which explains the lack of inclusion of a full verse on “Crush on You” by Lil’ Kim; her producers admitting, at the time, her music was becoming too dark (Hope). Despite these circumstances, Kim’s use of Biggie and Cease’s voices to power the song signifies her comfortability with her positionality as a Black woman in a predominantly male game. “Crush on You” became a mega-hit, and the Queen Bee is remembered for it, particularly for the ways in which she uses men on the record. Although the lyrical delivery of the song does not necessarily center Kim, the narrative is one of her own construction. Men can be trifling, and this has long been evident to Black women, specifically women in hip hop. Alike Joan Morgan, even when Kim is not rapping, her womanism is “brave enough to fuck with the grays (59),” and she constructs the narratives she commands her male counterparts to perform.
A womanist response to misogynoir in hip hop and woman’s objectification, Lil’ Kim uses the embodied male voices of hip hop’s most recognizable rappers to expose the contradictions of men, and conversely, the erotic liberty Lil’ Kim evidences women are entitled to. Consistent with Joan Morgan’s interpretation of feminism in the hip hop era, Lil’ Kim’s womanism must be sexually and erotically equal, and across Hard Core (1996) it is undeniable that Lil’ Kim has as much, if not more erotic power than the phallic icons of hip hop she uses to push her album forward. Across Hard Core (1996), Lil’ Kim reclaims the Black woman’s erotic agency, and implicates men in the process, calling them out for their trifling tendencies, and repeated denial of women’s right to pleasure in the bedroom, and beyond. Lil’ Kim’s womanism does not write off men, but rather calls them into an examination of their own contradictions. Perhaps even more cunning and subversive, Lil’ Kim makes the most prominent men in rap do this bidding for her; and through the embodied male voice, they lend credence to the erotic power of women.
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