Of all the acts announced on this year’s Vivid Sydney lineup, Lil’ Kim jumped off the poster. The New York rapper’s return, 15 years after her last Australian appearance at the Winterbeatz festival, was framed as a celebration of her 1996 debut Hard Core and its 2000 follow-up The Notorious K.I.M.. The tour artwork, lifted straight from the Hard Core cover, preserves her forever in her breakout moment.
In hip-hop’s canon, both albums more than justify the gloss of a nostalgia lap under the polished banners of Vivid and Melbourne’s Rising festival. Shaped under the mentorship of The Notorious B.I.G., Hard Core was swaggering and provocatively explicit, setting a blueprint that The Notorious K.I.M. refined with slicker pop production. While the next 25 years brought peaks and setbacks, that blueprint held, tracing a lineage through Nicki Minaj, Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion and Doechii. Without Big Momma Thang and How Many Licks?, there might be no WAP.
A mood of giddy nostalgia fills Carriageworks in the hours before Lil’ Kim takes the stage. The crowd is diverse, dressed to party and skewing younger than expected – some in Lil’ Kim merch, others channelling her fluorescent wigs. In the men’s bathroom, a fan at the urinal conducts a live poll of favourite Lil’ Kim songs.
Outside, Emma, 37, has travelled from Moree with friends. “How Many Licks? – that’s my song,” she says. Willy, 26, immaculate in head-to-toe black, credits Lil’ Kim with “putting me on to female rap”, despite being “like, 11” when she last toured.
Angelina, 19, grew up immersed in the 90s. “My mum had me very young, and she’d always play 2Pac, Lil’ Kim, Nicki Minaj, Biggie – all of that – in the car and cleaning the house. I grew up on this music.” She sees Lil’ Kim as both a fashion icon and a symbol of confident sexuality: “A lot of women don’t have that opportunity in other parts of the world.” With her mum stuck at work, she’s keeping her updated with videos from the night.
Inside the main hall, Barkaa whips up a rapturous response from a tightly packed front section. The Malyangapa and Barkindji rapper balances political fire and a pinch-me sense of occasion, speaking for many in the room as she recalls bumping Hard Core through her headphones as a kid.
Between hard-hitting songs like We Up and For My Tittas – performed over the beat from Dr Dre’s What’s The Difference – her banter is rousing. “They said I wouldn’t be shit – look at me, motherfuckers,” she declares, drawing a huge, cathartic cheer.
Lil’ Kim’s arrival onstage is preceded by a 15-minute, R&B superclub-style DJ set, which confirms the crowd is ready to party without judgment. When she finally appears in her first leopard-print ensemble, it’s on a barebones stage elevated mostly by the venue’s scale and lighting. Flanked by four hardworking dancers and two towering bodyguards off to each side, it quickly becomes clear the night will be more about vibes than tightly delivered raps.
Far from the “supreme bitch” persona of Hard Core – or even her once-spiky feud with Nicki Minaj – Lil’ Kim delivers platitudes and gushing crowd work (her first words are “I love you, Sydney”), often at the expense of the songs. Stone-cold classics flash by in heavily truncated form, with Kim dipping in and out over sturdy backing tracks. Though billed as a celebration of her first two albums, the setlist zigzags across her catalogue like any standard tour stop – much to the crowd’s satisfaction.
There’s a fun run through How Many Licks? and a blink-and-you-miss-it Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix), complete with a tribute to Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes. The energy noticeably stalls whenever the charisma-free Tayy Brown – introduced as her husband – appears on stage to sing and rap forgettably, eating into already limited time.
Fleeting though they are, highlights include a radio-style segment where she briefly raps along to Biggie’s Juicy, delivering a jolt of genuine feeling, while Lighters Up lands with more spirit than most of the set. By the time the DJ is farewelling the crowd with a call to buy some merch, Lil’ Kim’s actual stage time barely scrapes an hour – a thin return on a ticket north of $100.
While an eye-catching booking, you’d be hard-pressed to call this a show befitting such a formidable hip-hop legacy. But the crowd’s energy – and absolute faith in the Queen Bee – at least make it memorable.
Lil Kim is playing at Festival Hall in Melbourne on 30 May, as part of Rising festival
