That distinction between hate and lust is especially clear on Kim's scathingly angry new record. Gone are the warm, sensual, funky arrangements and piano loops of "Hard Core," replaced by ominous, gut-churning bass, car-crash electric guitars, creepily pulsing neo-electro effects and lots of mournful Latin flourishes courtesy of a host of producers including Puffy Combs, Shaft, Mario "Yellowman" Winans and Deric "D-Dot" Angelettie. The record has the sound of a battlefield, not a skin flick. Only the salacious "How Many Licks," featuring thong-fetishist Sisqo, recalls the playfully ripe side of Kim that dominated "Hard Core." On that track, she generously entices prison inmates to jerk off, imagining their tongues between her thighs, a sentiment as sweet as it is debauched.

Everywhere else on the record, it's hard to buy Kim as an avatar of autonomous female desire, which so many in the press would like her to be. Instead, the album is permeated by the malice and despair of sport fucking. She's still demanding that the boys get between her legs, still celebrating her clit and boasting about using big-dicked admirers like disposable dildos. But there's a rage toward men here, a not-fully-articulated castrating venom.

Take the call and response chorus to "Suck My D**k" (which Newsweek called "a spiky feminist anthem"). She sets it up rapping, "I treat ya'll niggers like you treatin' us, no doubt/Yo yo yo come here, so I can bust in your mouth." Then comes the first iteration of a dialogue between Kim and guest vocalist Mr. Bristal in which every line is spit out with palpable contempt:

"Yo, come 'er, bitch."
"Nigger fuck you."
"No fuck you, bitch."
"Who you talkin' to?"
"Why you actin' like a bitch?"
"'Cause ya'll niggers ain't shit. If I was a dude, I'd tell you to suck my dick."

How could anyone but a nihilist call this progress? Of course, an enormous part of the fury on the record comes in response to the 1997 murder of Biggie Smalls, Kim's mentor and lover. Indeed, that's supposed to be one of the reasons why it took her so long to make another album. The track "Revolution," which features an almost macabre vocal by Grace Jones, is a fantasy about taking revenge on Smalls' killers, while "Hold On," with Mary J. Blige, is an uncharacteristically passionate, mournful ballad commemorating him.

Nevertheless, if Kim was a sex kitten on "Hard Core," here she's a vagina dentata. That itself is potent in those rare moments when she exhibits the kind of self-awareness that her former best friend and current archrival Foxy Brown did on "My Life" (1999), a stunning, tortured song laced with despairing, suicidal asides and a sad chorus about "a black girl's ordeal." Kim's "Don't Mess With Me," which revolves around a speeded-up sample from Pat Benatar's "Heartbreaker," is a defiant response to romantic betrayal, and it suggests a darker motivation for her armorlike eroticism. Over a skittering, dirty bass studded with searing peals of electric guitar, Kim raps, "Now I'm back to my old ways, like in the old days/Flirtin', not givin' a fuck, what?/Got you lookin' in the mirror sayin', 'Damn!' Sick thinkin' 'bout the next man fuckin' this tight pussy/Niggaz want me, even though they got a honey/If I'ma be No. 2, they givin' me some hush money." It's a fierce track, but a sad tale, one that suggests just how defeatist the whole 'ho mentality is.

Old-fashioned feminists are often accused of man hating, but "The Notorious K.I.M." proves that there can be just as much animosity in trying to beat boys at their own game. The record is just one more bit of evidence that the self-conscious lasciviousness of the past few years has, in many cases, marked an escalation rather than a truce in the sex wars. One can see this everywhere: Former New York Press sex columnist Amy Sohn's "Run Catch Kiss" was all about the frustration and loneliness beneath her fraudulent libertine pose. The documentary "Sex: The Annabel Chong Story" followed a woman who went straight from porn studies to porn acting, but the tale was bleak and the star seemed far more deluded than emancipated. And this record, which, given Kim's new glamour-girl status, one might have expected to be giddy and triumphant, instead feels battle-scarred and vicious.

Of course, on one level it's utterly preposterous to even be talking about Lil' Kim in feminist terms, and she can hardly be faulted for not living up to an ideology she never subscribed to. But that's exactly the point -- any version of feminism that makes political idols of sexual mercenaries is itself absurd.

There's a lot that's dazzling about "The Notorious K.I.M." The flamenco rhythm on "No Matter What They Say" is simply delicious, her flow agile and enticing. "Right Now," her parody of Suzanne Vega's hip-hop-inflected "Tom's Diner," is mean-spirited but effective; she nails Vega's whiny deadpan cadence. Indeed, the very violence of Kim's delivery throughout makes it arresting. But it's also an overwhelmingly gloomy, martial and depressing record. The unarticulated pain beneath her bravado makes it feel more authentic, but there's nothing liberating about it. If there's no joy in playing the role of a whore, then there's no power in it, either.

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