The 2000s File Feature
No Matter What They Say
Lil' Kim, "No Matter What They Say": Self-Possession in the Face of a Crowded Room Queen Bee at the Turn of the Century By the year 2000, Lil' Kim had alread…
01 The Story
Lil' Kim, "No Matter What They Say": Self-Possession in the Face of a Crowded Room
Queen Bee at the Turn of the Century
By the year 2000, Lil' Kim had already redrawn the map of what a female rapper could say, could project, and could demand from an audience. Born Kimberly Denise Jones in Brooklyn, she had come up under the mentorship of the Notorious B.I.G. and broken through with her 1996 debut Hard Core, an album so explicit and so confident that it unsettled the rap industry's existing gender dynamics. She had spent four years establishing and defending a persona that combined hypersexuality with genuine lyrical wit, navigating a genre that was not always designed with her interests in mind. When she sat down to make The Notorious K.I.M., her second studio album released in 2000, the stakes were clear: the follow-up needed to prove the debut was a statement, not an accident.
Building a Song About Standing Your Ground
"No Matter What They Say" arrived as the lead single from that second album and functioned as a public declaration of artistic and personal resilience. The production landed in the zone that defined early-2000s hip-hop pop crossovers: a beat with enough warmth to invite radio play without sanding off the MC's harder edges. Lil' Kim rapped about dismissing critics, rivals, and anyone else with opinions about how she chose to present herself. The song did not make its argument gently. The verses moved with the kind of momentum that live performances depend on, and the hook was constructed to stick in the mind well after the track ended.
Chart Performance in a Competitive Summer
The song entered the Billboard Hot 100 on July 15, 2000, at position 80, climbing steadily over the following weeks. It reached its peak of number 60 on August 5, 2000, and held the chart for 10 weeks total. That run reflects a record that performed respectably against heavy competition: the summer of 2000 was extraordinarily crowded at the top, with *N SYNC, Destiny's Child, and Faith Hill all occupying major commercial real estate. For a hip-hop track from an artist who had always existed somewhat outside the mainstream pop framework, a Top 60 Hot 100 peak represented meaningful crossover reach.
The Landscape She Was Working In
Female rappers in 2000 faced a specific set of industry dynamics. The genre was commercially dominated by male artists and male-run labels, and women who broke through tended to either soften their image for crossover consumption or maintain an underground credibility that limited commercial reach. Lil' Kim had always refused that binary. She pushed her image further in both directions simultaneously: more explicit, more glamorous, more expensive-looking, more combative. "No Matter What They Say" was an expression of that refusal. The song's lyrical content was not a response to a single critic; it was a structural argument about the right to define oneself regardless of external pressure.
Legacy and the Argument That Kept Going
Lil' Kim's influence on the generation of female rappers who followed her is extensively documented, and "No Matter What They Say" is one of the artifacts of her work during the period when that influence was being established. The late-career rappers who cite her as a foundational figure are describing the cumulative effect of albums like The Notorious K.I.M., the videos, the performances, and the public persona. This particular single represents the moment of the second album, when the argument about self-definition had moved from debut provocation to deliberate doctrine. Pull it up today and what you hear is an artist who already knows exactly who she is, and sounds like she's been waiting her whole life to tell you. That kind of certainty is rare on record and rarer still at this volume.
"No Matter What They Say" — Lil' Kim's singular moment on the 2000s charts.
02 Song Meaning
"No Matter What They Say" by Lil' Kim: The Architecture of Self-Definition
Against the Chorus of Criticism
The title of Lil' Kim's lead single from her second album tells you everything about its emotional logic: this is a song about persisting in your own identity in the face of collective judgment. The "they" of the title is deliberately vague, expansive enough to include critics, rivals, moralists, and anyone else with a loud opinion about how a woman in hip-hop should present herself. Lil' Kim does not argue with that chorus of voices in the song; she dismisses it. The song's meaning is built on that dismissal, not on a defensive explanation or a plea for understanding.
Self-Possession as a Lyrical Mode
The lyrical approach throughout "No Matter What They Say" is assertive rather than reactive. The verses catalog pride in material success, sexual confidence, and professional dominance without pausing to acknowledge the legitimacy of any opposing view. This is a rhetorical strategy: by refusing to engage with the criticism even while naming its existence, the song models the self-possession it describes. The listener is not being shown someone who has overcome doubt; they are being shown someone who has decided doubt is not worth their time. That distinction gives the song a specific energy that sets it apart from the genre's more conventional resilience narratives.
Gender, Hip-Hop, and the Right to Take Up Space
The cultural context that makes this song meaningful extends well beyond its individual lyrics. Female rappers in 2000 were operating in a genre whose commercial infrastructure had been built around male artists, male listeners, and male critical perspectives. The success or failure of a female MC was often filtered through frameworks that did not apply to her male counterparts. Lil' Kim had been navigating those frameworks since her debut in 1996, and "No Matter What They Say" reads as an explicit refusal of them. The song insists on a right to define one's own terms, which is a more radical position than it might appear in an era before that argument became widespread cultural vocabulary.
The Sound of Certainty
Musically, the production supports the lyrical stance through its own kind of confidence. The beat is assured, moving forward without hesitation, and Lil' Kim's delivery matches it: controlled pace, precise diction, no vocal gestures toward vulnerability or concession. The chorus functions as a declaration rather than a question, arriving with the finality of a position already taken. The musical equivalent of the lyrical stance is this: nothing in the arrangement sounds uncertain, nothing apologizes for the space it occupies. Form and content align in a way that makes the song feel internally consistent even when the subject matter is explicitly confrontational.
What the Song Established
Songs that argue for self-definition against external judgment are common enough in popular music. What distinguished this one, in its moment, was the specificity of the context and the identity of the person making the argument. Lil' Kim at the peak of her powers in 2000 was not a new voice finding its feet; she was a fully formed artistic identity making a second major statement. The song's chart run, 10 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 with a peak of 60, reflects an audience that heard and responded to that statement during a competitive summer for mainstream pop. The argument the song makes has not aged: the right to self-definition, asserted with total certainty, is permanently relevant.
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