There’s a lot of love in the room for her music. It’s a shame we didn’t get to hear more of it

Updated May 31, 2026 — 1:24pm,first published May 28, 2026 — 12:56pm

That Lil’ Kim could guest on Nine’s Today Extra breakfast show – the woman who once rapped “can’t wait to show my girls he sucked the p--s out my p--y (ooh)” on Suck My Dick – says a lot about how far female sexual empowerment has been mainstreamed since her 1996 debut album, Hard Core. In large part, that’s because of artists like Kim, and those she’s inspired: Nicki Minaj, Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion.

Kim’s touring Australia for the first time in 15 years, headlining Vivid and Rising festivals. The shows are sold as celebrating Hard Core and its follow-up, The Notorious K.I.M.

Hard Core opened to the sounds of Kim bringing a man to orgasmic submission, but her music’s always been about more than the sexual acts themselves – it was about turning misogyny on its head (pun intended) and embodying female power. In the drinks queue, I meet Sophiya, a rapper from Sydney. “I’m both masc and femme,” they say. “We’re both Cancers and she inspired me to explore my fluidity.”

DJ sets from Soju Gang and Dutty Worldwide, impressive pole-dancing acrobatics, and a short mega-mix of top-40 pop and rap by Kim’s DJ have the crowd primed to lose it. She arrives in a leopard-print ensemble, flanked by dancers and laughably staunch security guards (a foreshadowing of the male buzz-kill that follows). Now 51, Kim’s “Queen Bitch” demeanour has softened, but she still has the charisma to rip through truncated versions of The Jump Off, Magic Stick, Big Momma Thang and Get Money.

But the wheels start falling off when Kim’s “hubby” arrives onstage: Tayy Brown, a 26-year-old rapper and singer with whom she has had an intermittent romantic and professional relationship. Brown faintly sings over a backing track, and Shazam returns a savage “no result” on the song. Betrayal ripples through the crowd; it’s as if this young man taking their matriarch’s spotlight has undone decades of feminist progress. There are boos. It’s rough.

Kim almost gets things back on track with How Many Licks, Lady Marmalade and Not Tonight (Ladies Night Remix), but another mega-mix of other artists’ music ends the night on a whimper.

Kim hasn’t played a single song from her enviable catalogue to completion. There’s so much love in the room for the woman on stage, but many in the crowd, who’d paid up to $149 per ticket, are incredulous at how little they’d heard of the world-changing music they’d come to celebrate.Reviewed by Nick Buckley

Dry Cleaning performs in front of a huge painting of vocalist Florence Shaw having her eye