Lil Kim Speaks on Direction She Wanted to Go With Her Notorious Kim Album

In 2000, Lil Kim dropped her second album, Notorious Kim. She was on Atlantic Records at the time, but was managed by Puff Daddy, so she was basically on Bad Boy/Atlantic Records. In a recent interview with Billboard, she spoke on the conflict of ideas she and Puff had with Atlantic Records on what direction the album should go. Nevertheless, the album was still a success. It has sold 1.8 million copies to date in America, and 4.6 million copies worldwide.

"Me and Puffy had our own ideas for the album. At that time, Puff was my manager. He was everything, actually. Bad Boy was my label cause Puffy was my manager, but you can basically say that Bad Boy and Atlantic shared me. Atlantic didn't really want to live up to their part of the deal because they didn't understand the direction that me and Puffy wanted to go,” the rapper continues. "Me and Puffy had to get creative with a lot of the music. We gave them the first three tracks we wanted to be singles and they said, 'We don't want to support our half of it with this.' Puffy was very credible so I said, 'Why don't you think he knows what he's doing?' I totally trusted him. But, they kept saying no. We ended up going with 'No Matter What They Say.' That definitely wasn't me and Puff's choice as the first single. But Puffy is a business man, so we compromised. We knew we had singles but Atlantic didn't see our vision. I think our word should have meant more but we wanted their support.” (Billboard)

Still one of my favorite albums from her. I didn't really get to listen to Hardcore (1996), but La Bella Mafia (2003) and The Naked Truth (2005) and Notorious Kim were super dope albums to me. I find it hard to listen to albums from female rappers, but Lil Kim is just so different. Hardcore (1996) still remains her best selling album, with over 2.4 million copies sold to date.