Rich Homie Quan made Hip Hop shed a few tears and maybe punch a few walls when he forgot the words to The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Get Money” during a set honoring Lil’ Kim at VH1 Hip Hop Honors: All Hail The Queen last week.
Lil’ Kim spoke with Sway about the performance and says that she was disappointed in the outcome of the show.
“I was like, ‘Oh, God, what am I gonna tell Brooklyn?'” she laughs.
The Bad Boy Entertainment rapper says that because of her professionalism and passion for her music and fans, she knew the performance was less than the song deserved. However, she says the circumstances surrounding the awards were not ideal. Rich Homie Quan has already acknowledged his mistakes and said that the teleprompter that was put in place to help him did not work during the performance.
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“When it happened, it was a little, yeah, it was a dagger to the heart,” Lil’ Kim says of the botched performance, “it was disappointing and all that, but I also knew the behind the scenes and how that actually could have happened….There is nothing I can say to make people forgive or excuse what he did. That’s a legend. [Biggie’s] everything and that record is a part of the culture that is basically in the history books. It’s a part of your homework, it’s a part of the Hip Hop Bible so to speak. You have to know that record. But in [Rich Homie Quan’s] defense, I guess what I can say right now may make people at least understand a little bit of how that situation happened.”
Lil’ Kim explains that she wasn’t even planning on performing “Get Money.” She and VH1 worked for weeks on crafting her set for the show, which also honored Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott and Salt-N-Pepa. She gave the network a list of all the artists she wanted to see if they were available to be part of her tribute. The artists ranged from her collaborators to her friends, including Nas, Future, Fetty Wap and, yes, Drake despite their past war of words. She says that as the show got closer, she believed that she had two big artists confirmed to perform with her, but they dropped out last minute. So she was scrambling to try to fill in the gaps.
“When we started revisiting the list, we called everybody on that list,” she says.
Rick Ross and Fabolous were interested in joining her, but neither could make it to New York on such short notice. Even after Fab “tried everything,” Lil’ Kim still needed one more performer 14 hours before the show.
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The situation was looking bleak. Until they dialed up the Atlanta rapper.
“Rich Homie was on the list as a friend of mine who we wanted to call who could just perform even one of his songs with me,” she says. “Out of those five artists that were left, Rich Homie was in that bunch and he was the only one that was like, ‘Ok, Kim, I’m on the plane, anything for you.'”
Kim explains that the “Flex” rapper didn’t know he was performing “Get Money” when he agreed to do the show. She says she didn’t even question his ability to do the song because “in my mind, I’m like, everybody knows ‘Get Money.'”
The two also didn’t get a proper rehearsal. Lil’ Kim says that usually, there are multiple run-throughs before a performance like this one. However, she and Rich Homie only got one practice together, which went well enough.
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“He was saying it, he had his little Southern twang on it, which is not what everybody knows, but hey, he’s my friend,” she says. “He came through for me at the last minute.”
Then, the actual show happened.
Because hindsight is 20/20, Lil’ Kim says that she and her team realized they could have asked Biggie’s son, Christopher Wallace Jr. to do “Get Money.” But of course, that thought came after the show and the Internet was exploding.
“That would have been super dope, but again, like I said, it was just a last minute thing,” she says. “You’re under the gun. You’re not really thinking straight. I wasn’t thinking straight. The whole time, I kind of was a little off when I was performing because I was nervous about the whole damn thing.”
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Rich Homie did make a sincere apology on Instagram, which Lil’ Kim fully accepted.
“He’s such a good freaking person,” she says. “Yeah, it was an unfortunate situation, but he’s a friend of mine and I’ve known him for a little while and he’s always good to me. … He’s just a freaking good person. He didn’t question anything. He jumped on that plane. And the whole thing was he was coming to fuck with Lil’ Kim. He was coming to support Lil’ Kim.”
Listen to Lil’ Kim’s interview with Sway below:
