How lying about a New York shootout led to Lil’ Kim serving prison time
Lil’ Kim was declared the ‘Queen of Rap’ around the late 1990s, and it was a crown she wore well for years, but by 2005, her reign was crumbling, as she faced the prospect of jail.
A shootout took place in 2001 outside a radio station in Manhattan, where Queen Kim had been on air for an interview. It was a serious incident, with reportedly 30 bullets sprayed. Nobody was killed, but only one person was injured.
Two of the shooters that day were believed to have been members of Kim’s entourage, which led the police to interrogate her. She then claimed that one of the alleged shooters hadn’t actually been present at the scene on the day of the shooting, while the other shooter she claimed not to know at all.
Kim’s statement was later proven to be false; she “flat-out lied,” as a prosecutor later put it in court.
The two men in her entourage were indicted in the shooting case and eventually pleaded guilty. Damningly for Kim, video footage was later consulted and showed her on the street during the shooting, and subsequently hopping into a limo with the suspected shooters.
The legendary rapper eventually admitted to wrongdoing in court. “At the time I thought it was the right thing to do,” she said, “but I now know it was wrong”.
Found guilty of lying to a federal grand jury, Kim was sentenced to a year and a day in prison, and she received a $50,000 fine. She could potentially have been sent to jail for 20 years, so this year-long sentence and fine were actually considered by prosecutors to be a light punishment.
Kim entered a federal detention centre in Philadelphia in September 2005, the very same week that she released new material. Her fourth album, with the somewhat ironic title of The Naked Truth, came out as she began a sentence for perjury.
Kim remained in detention in Philadelphia until the following July, whereupon she was released a few days early. She wouldn’t release another album for many years, only following up The Naked Truth in 2019, with the release of her fifth album, 9.