Lil Kim and Her Posse Shoot Blanks With Clap Clap

Posted On: January 13, 2011
Posted By: planetillshelby
Comments: 4

By shelz.

Nicki Minaj’s personal Night of the Living Dead continues with these two corpses who refuse to go away. After the hot mess jumble of Foxy’s belated “Christmas Massacre,” we are back to Ms. Jones with her latest, “Clap Clap.” Lil Kim is now Kimmy Blanco, the cocaine cowgirl, impersonator of Griselda and lover and all things powdery. I’m curious how you rebut someone stealing your style by stealing someone else’s. Kim tried to shed that Brooklyn accent while she was Dancing With the Stars. Now she’s Colombian. Maybe Nicki felt she could take Lil Kim’s spot because Lil Kim stopped wanting to be Kimberly Jones years ago. I’ve had the same thought.

I suppose all of that is irrelevant at this point, considering authenticity normally comes with a healthy helping of Disney-inspired fantasy. Focusing on lyrical dexterity, production value and the intricacies of delivery is what’s important and Kim is bound to have a bunch of all three. She is the vet in this situation. Plus she has two of her most able soldiers in tow, Lambolux and Sha Dash.

The bassline snakes through the horn sample which sounds like 70’s Earth Wind and Fire. There’s a simple thump that keeps the time, but it runs a bit slow. The high-pitched percussion sits on top of the brass shrilly like that layer wasn’t screwed down properly. There are times when the music seems to fade, like the rappers are recording this with tape recorders in their hands and they keep walking away from the speakers. The “Clap Clap” vocal on the hook is flat. This song needs some finishing work.

Now, on to the lyricism. Lil Kim isn’t exactly breaking ground with lines like, “I strike harder. Ten times smarter. I’ll sneak up on you like Japan did Pearl Harbor.” It just gets better with “It’s Kimmy Blanco homie, the head honcho. The queen reigns and pours. Hope you got your poncho.” Get it? Reign/rain?

Sigh.

Her homies don’t do much better. Dude on the second verse (I call him that because he never once identifies himself) claims he is a sick shot, so his bullets are contagious. (You’ll catch them. Get it? Catch them.) Then he tells all the dissenters he’s going to shoot them up, like movie shoots. Sha Dash at least tells us who he is, but if I were him I may not have. There’s a lot of Kanye reference. Then he snuggles up to Jay’s shadow talking a shot at Young Money and their well… money. Rapper X (Again, I’m not hearing any identification.) closes it down saying they eliminate imitation, then goes immediately into a Big Sean punchline, “send my enemies up; elevation.”

Seriously?

I try to ride for Kim, I do, but she can’t keep leaving me on the side of a dirt road with no gas. If this is what we should expect from Hardcore 2, she might be better off in the audience clapping for Nicki and not at her.

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