Lil Kim - 9 (RSD2020)

Brooklyn rapper Lil' Kim verified her icon status in the '90s with her role in the Notorious B.I.G.'s Junior M.A.F.I.A. collective and with her rock-solid 1996 solo debut Hard Core. Ruthless street rhymes and larger-than-life swagger made her one of the hardest female figures in the mostly male-dominated rap scene. Lil' Kim's later albums didn't always live up to the raw energy and puffed-up confidence of her earliest material, and after 2005's lackluster The Naked Truth, her musical output slowed significantly. Rap changed many times over in the 14 years between The Naked Truth and Lil' Kim's fifth proper studio album 9, and the nine songs here see one of the genre's superpowers attempting to ride those changes. At first, the trappy production and cloudy samples of "Bag" clash with Kim's dated flows, but by the hook the song and the vocalist adapt to each other somewhat. She gets similar results singing over the skeletal and bass-driven R&B instrumental of "Too Bad" and hissing sl