9 (Lil' Kim album)


9 is the fifth studio album by American rapper Lil' Kim. It was released on October 11, 2019, through Queen Bee Entertainment and eOne. The single "Go Awff" was released on February 15, 2019. During the taping of VH1's Girls Cruise reunion episode, Kim confirmed her intention to release the second volume of 9 in 2020.

Background

On March 23, 2019, Lil' Kim announced that the album would be released on May 17, 2019. The rapper described the meaning behind her fifth album in an interview with BET on the red carpet at the 2019 BET Awards: "It's a spiritual awakening number for me. Also, when I started out in Junior M.A.F.I.A. it was 9 members, my daughter was born June 9th, Biggie died March 9th, it is 2019. It's a powerful number for me. I'm very spiritual and one day God was talking to me and I was like '7 is my favorite number' and He was like 'yes but 9 is your favored number' and I said thank you Jesus, I love you. I'm going with 9." In April, she announced that the label eOne had decided to push back the release of the album which was then expected to premiere in July 2019 to coincide with Kim's reality show Girls Cruise.

Promotion

The 2018 song "Nasty One", previously slated as the album's first single, eventually was not included in the track list. "Go Awff", released in February 2019, instead became the lead single, with a music video released in March. In April, the rapper released a promotional single "No Auto Blanco" exclusively for streaming on SoundCloud. It was followed by the second official single "Found You" featuring O.T. Genasis and City Girls in September 2019. On October 3, Lil' Kim released the third single, "Pray for Me", featuring Rick Ross and Musiq Soulchild, and confirmed October 11 as the final release date of the album. Although originally reported as consisting of 13 tracks, the album eventually featured only nine songs. The previously confirmed song "Missing" was left off the album.
Lil' Kim has confirmed that the second part of 9 will be released at a later date and that it will feature a song with Missy Elliott and Paris Hilton as well as collaborations with Remy Ma, Fabolous, both of whom she has collaborated with in the past, on "Wake Me Up" and "Spicy", respectively and comedian Pretty Vee who featured on Girls Cruise. The first part of 9 was released as a deluxe edition to CD which featured “Nasty One ” as a bonus track. “Spicy” was released as a bonus track on the vinyl release of the album.

Critical reception

The album was on NPR's "best new albums of the week" at the time of its release, and was met with mixed to positive reviews from critics. Jordan Bassett of NME rated the album 3 out of 5 stars and described it as "lewd, contrarian and confrontational – all the qualities that make Kim an icon".

Commercial performance

9 did not make an impact on the US Billboard 200 or any other national chart which incorporates streaming figures, but it reached number 7 on Billboards hip-hop album sales chart and number 47 on Billboards overall album sales chart, and entered sales-only charts in the UK and France.

Track listing

Sample credits