Lil' Kim had a turbulent home life, and she first met Biggie Smalls after a period of homelessness in her teens. She rapped for him on the corner of Fulton Street in Brooklyn and impressed him so much that she was able to join his group Junior M.A.F.I.A. in 1995. Although Biggie had married Faith Evans the year before, they also began having an affair.
"He became my friend, my lover, my everything. I was his biggest fan." Kim told Entertainment Weekly. "He knew I would be the biggest female rapper. I think I inspired him to want to do different things and be different. We were a match made in heaven, like Sonny and Cher or Ashford and Simpson."
As Clover Hope wrote in her book The Motherlode: 100+ Women Who Made Hip-Hop, the relationship between Kim and Biggie has become "part of hip-hop lore." Although Lil' Kim wrote most of her own lyrics, Biggie Smalls helped shape her "cadence" and "flow," coaching her to have a successful career. Kierna Mayo, the founding editor-in-chief of Honey, called Biggie "a Svengali of sorts, and she was his loyal concubine. And it was dramatic and sometimes tragic to see."
Though the couple certainly had good times, they weren't without bad ones either.
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