No celebration of Hip-Hop would be complete without a nod to the Queen Bee herself, Lil’ Kim.

Fittingly, then, the iconic femcee was bestowed with her own XXL Legend cover – a series that toasts the 50th Anniversary of the game-changing genre.

Beyond posing it up in a fierce shoot lensed by Ahmed Klink, the rapper opened up about her illustrious career and upcoming ventures – including new music, a new label, and a new documentary.

Pics and quote below…

On Being Called An Icon:

“Everyone calls me an icon, and it’s an honor to me. It makes me smile. It makes me happy to know that people look at me that way because I never really saw that for myself, but it just happened organically, and this is my place in Hip-Hop.”

On Her Upcoming Ventures:

“Professionally, I have a book coming, documentary movie, all that stuff is in the works. I’m looking forward to building my own empire as far as being able to have my own artists and, you know, just being able to help someone else’s vision come to fruition. That means a lot to me. I’m only working with new artists, period. And I have my friends and everything. I’m only working with new artists. I love helping other artists’ dreams come to fruition.

That makes me feel good. So many people helped me. I’m giving it back, I have my friends, and people I love in the industry. Obviously, I’ll work with them, but yeah, only new artists. I’m working on something big; I don’t want to talk about it yet ’cause it is coming into fruition. But I have something really big I’m working on for new artists. And, you know, everyone sees me from years back, support new artists, support women, so, you know, I just wanna be able to build my own empire. That is it. Building my own empire”

On Her Hard Core Album:

“Hard Core is a classic. You can’t put that album next to anything else. To me, my albums start from Notorious K.I.M., ’cause Hard Core is a classic. It’s just something different. It’s a staple. It’s monumental, like something that just is like in a museum. You don’t even put a number on it, you know what I mean? It’s just something like how I look at Michael Jackson’s albums, you know what I mean? It’s just a classic. And by the way, all this talk about writing, I’ve wrote for other people. I’ve wrote on Diddy’s album. Check your credits, homeboy. Whoever his name is, I just learned about some guy that was talking smack. Whatever. Yeah. Do your homework, el stupido.”

Your thoughts?

[Photo Credit: XXL / Ahmed Klink]