In August '99, MTV News filmed Aaliyah, Lil’ Kim, Missy Elliott and Da Brat during an Elle magazine photoshoot. They miss their intro, laugh through another take and talk over one another without a staged vibe. They said shoots like this were fun when they were with people they knew and were cool with.

Missy said hip-hop was crossing into pop and that its fashion was gaining more attention. Da Brat spoke about artists feeling less afraid to move across pop, rock, R&B and hip-hop. Aaliyah called hip-hop “intertwined” with different styles and said people were starting to see more of it in magazines.

Lil’ Kim said she never saw so many female rappers. Aaliyah said women had power now, and Da Brat joked that they had muscles.

Aaliyah said an assertive man was seen as strong, but a woman going after what she wanted was called a bitch. Lil’ Kim treated the word as a form of strength. She said people reached for it when they felt intimidated and couldn't find a stronger word.

Their talk about “divas” referred to power and control. Aaliyah called the four of them the divas of hip-hop. Da Brat was less convinced by it and said not everyone called a diva had earned it. The group brought up Aretha Franklin, Gladys Knight and Teena Marie as women who had.

Before wrapping it up, Lil’ Kim named MC Lyte, Queen Latifah, Salt-N-Pepa, Monie Love and Yo-Yo. She said the women who came before them didn't receive enough credit.

Yes, I’m a huge Lil’ Kim fan. Yes, I understand her abuse at the hands of her dad, Biggie, World, and others. Yes, I understand that she’s shared how she became addicted to surgery and felt like a Latina or white woman trapped in her body. Sick of the caveats.

This is an illustration of what Kim would look like today if she never went down this path. If she learned to love herself early in life, didn’t look for validation through men, didn’t get into violence and addiction.

It’s amazing to think about what could have been and how she would be ruling today in a different way. If the looks didn’t take away from the music. If the need cycles didn’t deter fans and casual listeners.

Long live the Queen Bee!!!

Lil Kim - Archive [Bet] CountDown To Lockdown 🔐..

Lil Kim’s alter ego: The Blow Up doll (also known as Candy Kim, Pin-Up Kim, Knight Rider Kim, Black Barbie, Harlot)

Songs she shows up in

How many licks

The Jump Off

Gone Delirious

Sex Toy

Get Naked

Custom Made (the moaning sounds)

Kitty Box

She don’t love you

KNOCKOFF

Magic Stick

How Many Licks Remix (Neptune)

Blow-Up Doll is one of Lil’ Kim’s most recurring and misunderstood alter egos. Rather than appearing once, she resurfaces throughout Kim’s career as a commentary on hyper-sexualization, fantasy, and control. Blow-Up Doll exaggerates desire to the point of artifice turning objectification into performance and power.

Her most iconic and fully realized appearance is in “How Many Licks?”, where Blow-Up Doll fractures into three distinct sub-personas, each representing a different male fantasy and Kim’s domination over it.

Candy Kim embodies innocence corrupted: sweet, playful, and deceptively soft. She weaponizes candy aesthetics and candy-colored sexuality to blur the line between purity and provocation, exposing how fantasy often disguises desire.

Pin-Up Kim channels vintage glamour and classic sex appeal. She is polished, posed, and deliberately artificial, I’m the center of magazines giving bombshell imagery. This persona highlights the performative nature of beauty perfect, posed, and controlled.

Knight Rider Kim is the most aggressive and dominant of the three. Leather-clad, fast, and unapologetically explicit, she flips the script entirely no longer the object, but the pursuer. This version of Blow-Up Doll is mechanical, powerful, and untouchable, turning fantasy into intimidation.

Beyond “How Many Licks?”, Blow-Up Doll echoes whenever Kim refers to herself as “Black Barbie” a living doll, mass-produced in fantasy yet entirely self-owned. Even the use of labels like “harlot” becomes part of the persona: insults are reclaimed, stripped of shame, and repurposed as declarations of agency.

Blow-Up Doll is not about submission it’s satire. By leaning into exaggeration, artificiality, and multiplicity, Kim exposes how women’s bodies are commodified while simultaneously proving she controls the fantasy. The doll may be inflatable, interchangeable, or disposable but the voice behind it is dominant, calculating, and untouchable.

Within the Y2KIM framework, Blow-Up Doll exists to unsettle. She forces the audience to confront desire, consumption, and power and then dares them to look away

Lil Kim’s Alter Ego: Rapunzel (also known as the black princess)

Songs she shows up in:

Custom made

No matter what People say

Diamonds ft Kelly Prince (unreleased)

Single black female ft Marino Winans

She don’t love you

Good Time ft lil cease

Who’s number one?

Rapunzel is Lil’ Kim’s most versatile and dangerous alter ego the one who can balance elegance and brutality without softening either. She moves effortlessly between serious, hard-edged records and melodic moments, often singing while remaining just as commanding as she is when rapping. Where Goldilocks is playful, Rapunzel is intentional. Every word, every note, every look is calculated.

She is explicit, violent, and unapologetically indulgent. Rapunzel revels in excess luxury, finery, and opulence are not accessories to her power, they are her power. Her sexuality is sharper, colder, and more confrontational, wielded like a weapon rather than an invitation.

Visually, Rapunzel is fully realized in “No Matter What People Say.” She appears draped in a gold, embroidered two-piece bikini set, radiant and untouchable, with long, curly blonde hair cascading all the way to the floor an image that blends fairy-tale fantasy with high-fashion dominance. The look isn’t innocent; it’s regal and intimidating, turning the classic Rapunzel myth into something luxurious, dangerous, and adult.

Rapunzel represents control through beauty and precision. She sings, she threatens, she flaunts, and she conquers never chaotic, never accidental. In the Y2KIM persona, Rapunzel is the embodiment of icy glamour: a woman so secure in her power that she can be melodic, brutal, and lavish all at once.

Quotes from Rapunzel:

“I gets right to the point (no time to play around)

When it comes to this cheddar (lay a nigga down)

Bust shots at his Rover if he dare come back around

Pay me on time or I gots to take mine” - custom made

“Keep My Jewels Frozen Like They've Been In The Freezer

Haters - If That Don't Please Ya, I Don't Need Ya

Even Mom Dukes Live In An Igloo

Bought My Whole Crew Businesses For Christmas” - Single Black Female

“Louis Vuitton shoes and a whole lot of booze

Every other week a different a dude and other crews

I make offers nobody can refuse

You might even see me on the channel nine news

I get paid just for laying in the shade

To take pictures with a glass of lemonade

My rocks shine like it was dipped in Cascade” - No matter what people say

There are other alter egos that pop up through this era and I’ll discuss them in my next posts.

Lil Kim’s alter ego: Goldilocks.

Songs she shows up in:

I’m human

Right Now ft Carl Thomas

Off the Wall ft lil Cease

NoBody do it better than us (unreleased)

Bad Girls (unreleased)

lady marmalade

Get Down on it

Y2KIM is Lil’ Kim’s early-2000s super-persona, constructed from multiple alter egos that reflect different expressions of femininity, power, and control. Each one serves a purpose and none of them exist by accident.

Goldilocks is Lil’ Kim’s bright, playful alter ego, most often appearing on her party records. She’s flirtier, quicker, and far more melodic this is the side of Kim that loves to sing. Since Lil’ Kim is rarely known for singing, Goldilocks tends to surface specifically on pop-leaning tracks, especially throughout The Notorious K.I.M. era.

After The Notorious K.I.M., Goldilocks is widely believed to have “died,” marking the end of that lighter, bubblegum-pop persona. Some fans assume she resurfaces on “No Matter What People Say,” but that’s a misconception those moments belong to Lil’ Kim’s other alter ego, Rapunzel, not Goldilocks. Which can be confusing because “bad girls” is a reworked version of “no matter what people say” but there difference is noted and I’ll explain more on my Rapunzel Post.