Hard Core: The Powerless Empowerment of an Audio Porn Movie

Until the mid-'90s, there seemed to be an unspoken, unofficial rule: As a female rapper, unless you are a member of a group and “commercialize” your sound, good luck enjoying the same platinum-album proceeds as your male counterparts -- and that’s not even a guarantee. Da Brat finally broke that barrier in 1994 with her debut, Funkafied. However, at most it is a glorified EP -- a nine-cut anomaly in a genre known for the lengthiest of albums -- and crafted by an androgyny. Somewhere in Brooklyn, NY, greater breakthroughs were waiting to be made.

Around the time of Da Brat’s debut, a 19-year Bed-Stuy native, Kimberly “Lil’ Kim” Jones, was about to enjoy the benefits of being associated -- in more ways than one -- with a rising star, the Notorious B.I.G. Becoming a member of a group Biggie formed and mentored, Junior M.A.F.I.A., she almost immediately stood out -- not just because she was a female, but because of her delivery pregnant with this lustful, seductive hoarseness. With the success of Junior M.A.F.I.A.’s singles (“Player’s Anthem” and “Get Money” were both Top 20 pop singles, and went gold and platinum respectively) and the album, 1995’s Conspiracy (gold), the public would get a lot more of Lil’ Kim with her debut solo album in November 12, 1996: Hard Core. Together with another album released exactly a week after (a little more on that later), Kim’s debut opened the topical and commercial possibilities of women rappers in the industry -- unfortunately, at a steep price.

How the album begins is a strong representation of the entire listening experience. For one thing, there’s the intro: a moviegoer jerking off with his hand greased with popcorn butter as he watches Lil’ Kim doing the hank panky. Then there’s something in addition, as evidenced by the very first couplet you hear from Kim’s lips, in “Big Momma Thang”: “I used to be scared of the d**k/Now I throw lips to the s**t/Handle it like a real b***h.” Recognize the paraphrasing? Yeah, straight out of Biggie’s “The What.” I know, shocking!

Big’s lyrical and stylistic influence as well as sexual explicitness form an unholy alliance in Hard Core. More than just virtually ghostwriting Kim’s lyrics -- at a time when such a thing was still considered a cardinal sin -- Biggie pops up every now and then: either to carry out choral duties (“Drugs” and “Crush on You”), unexpectedly throw in a bar or two (“Queen B***h”) or just…contribute general gibberish (“Take It”, one of the skits; and “F**k You”). Thus it is because of his heavy participation in this project that he deserves some part of the blame of what ails Hard Core, for the album paints Kim as a monochromatic, gold-digging wh*re -- that, and the fact that she gives fashion empires like Prada and Dolce & Gabbana a sizeable amount of free advertising.

So apart from the dry crime tale in “M.A.F.I.A. Land”, the average listener can pretty much chuck any expectation of any topical variance in Hard Core out the window, even though it is somewhat nice to see misogynistic male rappers have the tables turned on them. Kim wasn’t exactly the first femcee to counter such adversity; Latifah and Bo$$ had pretty much beaten her to it. However, Kim differed from these two, as she eschewed their respective counter-weapons. (i.e., the intellect of the former and the physical confrontation of the latter.) No, rather, Kim’s counter-weapon was the honey pot between her lower limbs, proving that she can come as hard as the guys -- no pun intended. She uses it as one hell of a bargaining chip when she does not get what she wants from the guys (“Spend a Little Doe”), flips Biggie’s infamous B-Side single “Just Playing (Dreams)” to the female version of an R&B star sex-fest (“Dreams”), counter-refuses the guys the pleasure of fellatio (“We Don’t Need It”), and reveals in “Not Tonight” that she has no shame in having multiple partners, making off with her lover’s Jeep after a sex session to “go f**k with some other cats.” To say that such actions denote a potential STD sewerage is being extremely generous.

And she has the nerve to be contradictory. As she says in “F**k You”, “See, that’s the difference between me and other b***hes/They f**k to get they riches/I f**k to bust a nut/Lil’ Kim not a slut!” Yeah, sure, and I’m Ron Jeremy.

Good thing she was in Puff Daddy’s camp. The Bad Boy founder unleashed members of his in-house Hitmen production crew to craft soul- and funk-drenched beats perfect enough for a crossover. Yes, some of the samples are way too familiar, which is compounded by the fact that they are barely tweaked beyond loops. Big Daddy Kane fans will recognize the same sample from Sylvester’s “Was It Something I Said” in the Taste of Chocolate intro show up in “Big Momma Thang”. Similarly, Stevie J lifts inspiration from the very same James Brown-penned “Message from the Soul Sisters” song that had been used in the hugely popular LL Cool J album -- Mr. Smith -- only a year ago. (“God Bless”) However, there are highlights, a few of them: Ski, who contributed in no small part to Jay-Z’s classic debut only a few months before (Reasonable Doubt), adds the slow, seductive piano sprinkles of “Spend a Little Doe”; Jermaine Dupri shows up for the sparkling, woodblock- and flute-dominated breeze of “Not Tonight”; and Brent “Faraoh” Toussaint puts the orchestral grandiosity of German composer Bert Kaempfert to great use in the simmering thunder of “M.A.F.I.A. Land”. Overall, Hard Core makes up for its occasional derivative moments by having a generally satisfactory sound. Indeed, it was this slick production trademark that the Hitman would perfect with the Notorious B.I.G.’s Life After Death four months later.

Thank goodness for the album’s sonic merits, because Kim’s endless sexual exploits -- all told in painstaking, grotesque detail -- wears thin two-thirds into an album that, at 49 minutes, is rather short by hip-hop standards. Besides, you know when the (main) protagonist of the album is beyond cheap when even Jay-Z, one of Biggie’s close friends, has the temerity to declare he wants his way with his mistress in “Big Momma Thang”. (“How B.I.G. […] trust you in the studio with me/[Doesn’t he] know I’m trying to sex you continuously?”) Shoot, even a peon like crewmate and Biggie’s cousin, Lil’ Cease, has the song “Crush on You” -- all to himself!

And that pretty much sums up the dimness of Hard Core: a compendium from a woman left to the mercy, flow- and topic-wise, of her male overlords; and with a personality that never extends beyond the realm of her punanny. But that didn’t sound a commercial death knell for Lil’ Kim’s career; rather, it established it. Going platinum in seven months -- and eventually, being certified double platinum by 2001 -- Hard Core is arguably the biggest-selling female solo rap album of all time. Couple that with fellow Brooklynite Foxy Brown’s Ill Na Na being released a week later -- which actually reaching that platinum peak a lot faster than Kim’s debut, even though it quickly stalled -- and you have a Pyrrhic victory: an expansion of the commercial possibilities of female rappers while further confirming their stylistic purgatory in the most male-centric musical genre in history. Hard Core, rather than making Kim seem empowered, arguably made her -- and by extension, the rest of femcee land -- even less powerful.

Oh well, guess there are some things that nookie can’t buy.

TRACK LISTING:

1. Intro in A-Minor
2. Big Momma Thang
3. No Time
4. Spend a Little Doe
5. Take It! (Interlude)
6. Crush on You
7. Drugs
8. Scheamin’ (Interlude)
9. Queen B***h
10. Dreams
11. M.A.F.I.A. Land
12. We Don’t Need It
13. Not Tonight
14. Player Haters (Interlude)
15. F**k You