The hip hop world is made up of individuals with high egos and the fight within themselves to stay on top of the game at all times.
So who is on top these days when it comes to female rappers? We all know Lil’ Kim stole the game in the 90’s, but is she still the biggest female rapper today?
Lil’ Kim
In 1994, we were introduced to Lil’ Kim by the Brooklyn based label, Junior M.A.F.I.A., who climbed in the rap game as a female artist and collected a fan base of thousands.
Her first solo album, Hard Core, was released in 1996 and reached Platinum status in 1997, labeling her as the best in the game. She was an idolized sex symbol and everyone knew her as a woman who would always defend what she stood for.
Kim’s Time To Shine Is Over
But recently, there has been talk in the media about a new female MC that seems to taking over the charts and hearts of millions of fans.
Nicki Minaj was introduced to us in 2009 and she quickly made up her mind that she would be second to no one.
According to MTV, Minaj became the first female artist to be included on MTV’s Annual Hottest MC List and the first female artist to top the chart unaccompanied since 2002.
In October 2010, Minaj became the first artist to have seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100 chart simultaneously, according to Wikipedia.com.
Her first studio album, Pink Friday, was released on November of 2010 and reached Platinum status in only one month.
The Beef
Minaj’s popularity and rapid growth didn’t sit too well with Lil’ Kim and a rivalry was born. It was posted on the Internet that Lil’ Kim would be releasing a mixed tape album on February 14, 2011, entitled Black Friday in response to Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday.
The reason behind this is obvious: Lil’ Kim doesn’t enjoy the spotlight being taken off of her. Her reaction to Nicki Minaj’s success is immature and rather pathetic—instead of creating a positive business relationship in order to assist each other, she decided to create a feud. Which is fine, but to me, that’s just the easy way out.
Lil’ Kim realized her name was slowly, but surely evaporating from the media and people were beginning to replace her. She created a drama in order to get people talking about her again, and I must admit, it worked. Now teams have been created and many people are anxious to see what Lil’ Kim has in store for us with her album, Black Friday.
But isn’t that what she wanted?
Lil’ Kim is using Nicki Minaj in order to regain her place as best female rapper in the game. The real question is, will it work? I don’t think it will… Lil’ Kim fell far too short in the rap game to dig herself out now.
On Twitter alone, Minaj has accumulated over 2 million followers while Lil Kim only has 125,000. Of course we can’t use Twitter as the only way to calculate a celebrity’s fan base but it does give us an idea that out of 105,779,710 Twitter users, only 125,000 care about what Lil’ Kim has to say.