Lil' Kim's New Album Is Out, Even if She Isn't

Sept. 28, 2005 — -- Lil' Kim's new album, "The Naked Truth" hits stores today, but as she's currently serving time at the Philadelphia Federal Detention Center for perjury, she's hardly available to do any promotion for it.

"She's got a lot to say and it's a fabulous, wonderful record, a very deep personal record ... creative, yet very touching," L. Londell McMillan, Kim's lawyer, told ABC Radio. McMillan says he's working to get his client transferred out of the current facility, where she's serving a 366-day sentence, to a nicer "prison camp," similar to the one where Martha Stewart served her time.

"It wasn't anything against Philly, but she's in a federal detention center instead of a prison camp, and usually for long-term stays you go to a federal prison camp," McMillan said.

Kim was convicted and began serving time last week on charges that she lied to a grand jury investigating a 2001 shootout between members of her entourage and a clique loyal to rival rapper Foxy Brown.

On her new album, she speaks of herself as a scapegoat in the government's crackdown on gangsta rap. The album features collaborations with Snoop Dogg and the Game, and her new single, "Lighters Up."

"Unfortunately, me as a woman, I had to take one for the team, and when I say 'for the team' I say hip-hop, because I was the poster child for the federal government, for their investigations," she told The Associated Press.

Born Kimberly Jones, Lil' Kim rose to fame in the mid-1990s as the queen bee in the male-dominated world of rap, collaborating with the likes of Sean "Diddy" Combs and the late Notorious B.I.G.

"There's no reason why I should be going to jail. ... I didn't shoot anyone, I didn't do anything wrong the way they would say," she said in her waning days of freedom.

McMillan urges fans to stay supportive. "You have to send letters to the Bureau of Prisons," he said. "You have to send letters to the warden."