
Lil Kim Readies New Clothing Line & Fifth Studio Album
A new Lil Kim clothing line is in the works and it’s long overdue!
The Brooklyn-native is a fashion trendsetter. She started a lot of trends in the late 90s and early 2000s. Kim is good friends with Marc Jacobs. Alexander McQueen used to take her to Milan, Cannes and Paris as his date to Fashion Week.Â
The stylish Brooklyn-native is readying a clothing line and her fifth studio album. She chatted with Billboard. Below are some excerpts.
First off, congratulations on your own clothing line. As an artist who has been a part of fashion for 20 years, what took you so long?
Itâs always been an interest, but you got to understand I came in the industry as a little baby. I was a baby. I was 16 or 17 when I made my first hit record. At that age, youâre not really thinking about [making a fashion line]. Timing is everything. At this point, itâs like Iâm really trying to just bloom and blossom as an artist in certain instances, because there was a lot of current events that happened in my life. Iâm a very spiritual person. I believe in God so Godâs timing is the right timing, period. Enough said.
What is the clothing line called?
I donât want to get into it, but Iâve always had the name 24/7 Star. That was the first part of my line. When I had my shoe line with Petite Paton, it was called Hollyhood, but we changed it to 24/7 Star. Weâve got different lines inside of the lines that weâre working on, and we might change up a couple of them. Weâre working on that right now.
Youâre also doing it through La Scala Boutique.
[Proprietor Rose Cordon] is a monumental figure. Sheâs like a mom to me. When I had my clothing line before, she wanted to put my stuff into the store then, but the company I was with was a small company and they folded. So I had to wait many years later and try to figure it out. That was another reason why it would have happened a long time ago. But like I said, Godâs timing is the right timing.
Weâre going to take our time with it. Iâm not gonna allow the demand from my fans to be rushed. This is like my album. My fans are the awesomest, but they can be the most non-understanding at the same time. I love them, but Iâm not gonna allow them to dictate certain things, whether itâs the timing or direction of my album. I think that this album is definitely going to have a happy medium, and thatâs all Iâm concerned with. Iâm a hustler first. Music is my life, music is what I do, music is my livelihood — this is how I make money! At the end of the day, I gotta give my fans certain sounds and music that they like, but theyâre also gonna get with the new sounds whether they like it or not. They gonâ get with the new thing, because Iâve always been a trendsetter and I do have a new sound and that sound was stolen from me. This is years in the making of another new sound.
Do you feel that on this project, you are going to tell that story that people wanted to hear?
Yeah, absolutely. I think that this is one of my highly anticipated albums and I want it to be fun. What comes with telling a story is fun. Iâm not gonna sit here and just make an album thatâs story-telling; you canât play that in the clubs. When I came out, it was a lot [of songs] like that. I had songs on the album where Iâm telling a story and these are some of my fansâ best songs like “Heavenly Father” I canât do. Itâs a different time. Donât get me wrong and I love my fans, but a lot of my fans, when I came out, some of them were way older than me, some of them were my age and some of them were way younger than me. The ones I think that were older than me, I think they never really grew from that with me. They were tryna keep their childhood with me, and so the ones who havenât grown with me, I canât do nothing about that. They gotta grow with me, you know what I mean?
At the end of the day, Iâm still gonna do what Iâm known for. Thatâs never gonna stop, because I would not be able to make the album without doing what Iâm known for or giving them a piece of Hard Core. I wanna give them that feeling, but I also want to bring them into my world a little bit like I did on The Naked Truth. And you know why a lot of my fans loved The Naked Truth? Itâs because I was going to prison at the time and I touched on a lot of things that were happening. Iâm not gonna make the same album twice — that doesnât make sense. Iâve never, for the life of me, understood why fans would think that any artist would make the same album twice. That would not make me a real artist. Itâs not realistic. Thatâs why one of my favorite lines from an artist to me is the Jay Z line when he says, “You want my old sh-t? Buy my old albums.” At the end of the day, heâs not gonna do the same things he did seven years ago. Heâs a different person, you know? But heâs gonna remind yâall, Iâm pretty sure heâs gonna give certain things. Just like me, Iâm gonna remind them of what I did before. So itâll be a perfect mix, and whichever of my fans donât understand that — Iâm sorry. They got to get left like a lot of my friends who havenât grown with me. I came up with a lot of friends, and a lot of my friends had to get left because they werenât growing with me. Itâs nothing personal, I love them still with my heart but if my friends arenât growing, I canât be held back.
Thereâs also a possibility you may be doing another type of “Ladies Night” collaboration on this project.
What I was saying was itâs about time for another “Ladies Night” song. Let me explain something to you â Iâm a hustler first. The âLadies Nightâ record got me a Grammy nomination and several MTV [award] nominations, and we performed the song on MTV during one of the biggest awards moments and my album went double platinum. At the end of the day, I want another one of those. I ainât thinking about no other bullshit, because like I said, this ainât what you want when it comes to that because Iâm an extremist. Plus, I already handled my business. Everybody else already know, I already put it down. Once that situation came at me, I addressed the person. Like I said, thatâs done and over with and they know what it is. That person knows what it is. Me and Remy is cool so I just want these blogs to keep my damn name out the bullshit.
So moving on from that, I would like to have something like that on my new album. Even if I just did records separately with different females, itâs still the unity. I was looking at the footage of me, Cardi and Remy all up there on that stage, and everybody did they thing, everybody held they own. Iâm also in the business side of things. I also stepped my game up from when I was a kid in the game and I was not really business-minded. I just was told what to do, so now Iâm putting business moves together.
Youâre taking complete control over the business aspect because you started so young and said a lot of times that you werenât in the driverâs seat. It feels like youâre really in the driverâs seat now.
Exactly. Iâm independent. Iâm not signed to a record company. I do have a situation going on that I canât really talk about until I can talk about it, but I have a situation going on and itâs kind of a partnership. Again, like I said, it feels good to be in the driverâs seat, be independent and do my thing. It feels really good. At this point, itâs about the artistry. Itâs also about the entrepreneurship, the boss moves this time around. At the end of the day, Iâm good at certain things behind the scenes as well, so thatâs just basically something that I wanted to make good on.
When are you looking to actually drop the album?
I donât have a specific date, but itâs definitely coming out this year. I have a couple people I want to work with. Iâm not gonna tell you who but thereâs a few people I want to work with, so I’m just getting those people together and getting them on the album. With me traveling, performing and doing music, itâs kind of hard. Plus I got my baby so Iâm just leveling everything now. But Iâm going hard.
Head over to Billboard to read the interview in its entirety.
Photos Credit:Â Rob Swanson
Source: Billboard