As the only female artist in the late Biggie’s Junior M.A.F.I.A. rap crew, the Brooklyn-bred Lil Kim quickly established her own solo presence; her 1996 double-platinum debut album Hard Core created a subgenre for sexualized female rap stars, a career that spawned reportedly over 15 million albums and 30 million singles (as of 2016) and also bridged women’s high fashion into Hip Hop. The 46-year-old Grammy Award-winner also infamously went to prison in 2005 for perjury, a move chronicled in one of the earliest rapper reality shows with BET’s Lil Kim: Countdown to Lockdown. Both Iandoli and publisher Hachette Books promise the memoir to live up to the first album title, however.