Yahoo! Music Album Review

Released on 04/09/05
Label: Atlantic

If timing is everything, Lil' Kim's couldn't be much worse. Just one week prior to the release of this, her fourth album, the lady who likes to be known as the "Queen Bee Of Hip Hop", traded her Gucci bikini for an orange boiler suit and the new title of inmate Kimberly Jones having been found guilty of perjury and sent to prison for a year and a day. While no doubt her current convict status and the circumstances surrounding it - she claimed, under oath that her manager wasn't at the scene of a shooting outside a New York radio station in 2001, when he was - will up her gangsta credentials, and draw attention to the album, there are probably plenty of record executives wishing she was at liberty to promote it.

On the up-side, her impending incarceration has given her something new to think about. Since first appearing as the only female member of the Notorious B.I.G. sponsored Junior M.A.F.I.A., Kim's profile on the mainstream has been less heavyweight talent, more the Jordan of rap: her ever-expanding chest, ever-shrinking wardrobe and pornographic lyrical content having elicited more attention than her music could ever hope to. But for "The Naked Truth", her focus has been momentarily shifted from bumpin' & grindin' to the rights and wrongs of her current plight.

Between the dead-eyed thud of "Whoa", the slinking menace of "Slippin'" and bleak shake "Spell Check", there's no shortage of bitter couplets consumed with the notion that everyone, from the CIA to the rest of rap, are out to get her. With every breath she reminds of what she's achieved, while insinuating that she's the victim of rampant jealously and being unfairly made an example of by the establishment. The whiff of self-absorbed paranoia is unmistakeable - after all, perjury is perjury - but the steady flow of skeletal club-struts and the added bite, courtesy of her apparent sense of injustice, have to be welcome.

Elsewhere though, "The Naked Truth is very much business as usual for the filthiest girl in music. Having vented her anger, "Gimmie That" digs out a solid R&B groove for Kim to run through the gymnastic capabilities of her private-parts, while the cartoon ghetto funk and lewd behaviour of "Kitty Box" would earn her star-billing in one of Snoop Dog's top-shelf DVDs.

Though hardly in the running for rap album of the year, there's plenty to recommend "The Naked Truth". Yet equally, there's an abundance of wearing phone skits, phoned-in guest performances - including one from Snoop himself - and shameless fillers to get in the way. It's seems that when it comes to letting herself down at the last moment, Lil' Kim really can't help herself.

    by Dan Gennoe