Lil Kim. Aaron J. Thornton/WireImage
Move over Mark, Luke, John, Corinthians and Leviticus: Lil Kim is ready to knock you off the best sellers list.
“My book has been done,” Kim, 49, said during an Instagram Live session on Thursday, November 9, referring to her memoir, The Queen Bee.
After working on the project for years, Kim is ready for its official launch, and apparently, so is her fanbase. “When we post our presales, we be surpassing the Bible. And that’s crazy,” she added. “And the thing is, it’s like the Bible, like I don’t take that lightly. I already know that.”
According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the Christian Bible holds the record of “Best-Selling Book.” The organization says it’s impossible to count how many copies have been printed over the last 1,500 years, but “research conducted by the British and Foreign Bible Society in 2021 suggests that the total number probably lies between 5 and 7 billion copies.”
However, the Christian publication Relevant magazine reported that in 2022, fiction author Colleen Hoover sold 7.3 million print copies of her romance novels — more than the estimated 5 million copies of The Bible sold that year.
Kim also spoke about dealing with the publishing industry. “But it’s like some crazy s—t going on behind the scenes,” she said. “You have to be really careful when you deal with these book companies because they try to, like, literally take advantage of you.”
She promised to write a letter to her fans and reveal what she’s gone through in getting them the book, adding, “Y’all really deserve to know what’s going on.”
Lil Kim’s The Queen Bee was initially set for a November 2021 release date. She even dropped a link for preordering that April, but apparently, issues pushed the book’s debut back. In July, she confirmed that the book was finally done. “It’s been a long journey, beehive,” she posted via X (formerly Twitter). “Edits are finally done. Thank you to my bestie/soulmate, Marc Jacobs, for doing my forward.”
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The publisher, Hachette Books, currently lists the memoir as arriving on September 23, 2025. “A true page-turner from start to finish, The Queen Bee is every bit as fierce, empowering, and badass as the woman at the heart of this story — and firmly cements her legacy as a true feminist icon,” reads the book’s listing.
The book aims to detail how when “teenager Kimberly Denise Jones — better known as Lil’ Kim — burst on the hip-hop scene in the mid-nineties, no one was prepared for how she would shake-up the entire music industry. As the sole female member of the Notorious B.I.G.’s rap collective, Junior M.A.F.I.A., and an affiliate of Puff Daddy and the Bad Boy family, Lil’ Kim always stood out from the pack.”
The memoir will also give readers the “behind-the-scenes of her legendary career, much of it for the very first time publicly.” She will talk about her high-profile relationships, “the misogynistic industry she fought to change through sex positivity,” and how she was sentenced to a year in prison for lying to a grand jury to protect friends involved in a 2001 shooting. (She was released in July 2006 after serving approximately 12 months in prison.)
