After months of hype, Hip-Hop fans everywhere are eagerly anticipating the drop of rapper Lil Kim’s memoir, “The Queen Bee.” Co-written by Kathy Iandoli, author of “God Save The Queens: The Essential History of Women in Hip-Hop” and with a foreword by fashion designer Marc Jacobs, the story of Kim’s rise from her Bed-Stuy beginnings to becoming one of the hottest female rappers in the game is “a true page-turner from start to finish,” writes publisher Hachette Book Group.
Kim is so confident that books are going to fly off the shelves that she’s predicting sales of biblical proportions.
In July, Kim confirmed the completion of her book in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s been a long journey beehive, edits are finally done. Thank you to my bestie/soulmate @themarcjacobs for doing my forward,” she wrote.
But the post turned out to be a tease for fans waiting to get their hands on the book.
In a Nov. 9 Instagram live post, the “Lighters Up” rapper confirmed “The Queen Bee” “has been done” and is ready to hit the store shelves. But she implied that there was some drama behind the scenes that she wasn’t ready to disclose.
“I’m going to write y’all a letter to tell y’all what’s going on…it’s not really cool. But I don’t want to use this to talk about it…But just know it’s like that,” she said in the video.
“When we post our pre sales, we be surpassing the Bible, and that’s crazy,” she continued. “The Bible, I don’t take that lightly, I already know that… It’s some crazy s**t going on behind the scenes. You have to be really careful when you deal with these book companies because they try to take advantage of you. You know, I’m a little Black woman.”
According to Guinness World Records, the Christian Bible is the bestselling book of all time, with at least 5 billion copies sold worldwide. But considering the Good Book has been around since before the invention of the Internet and the printing press, it’s had a lot of time to reach that record.
In 2022, romance fiction author Colleen Hoover surpassed the Bible’s yearly sales, with 7.3 million copies of her books sold compared to 5 million copies of the Bible.
We don’t know if Kim’s book will even get close to biblical sales. But fans are going to have to wait a little longer to find out. “The Queen Bee” is now scheduled to be released Sept. 23, 2025.
