This VH1 Hip-Hop Honors performance—featuring Dej Loaf, Lil Mama and Teyana Taylor—is how many of us imagined ourselves at prepubescent ages, cautiously memorizing dirty lyrics and seeing Lil Kim’s Day Glow costumes and wigs in the “Crush on You” video.
Lil Kim was among the long-overdue honorees at Monday night’s Hip-Hop Honors, which also paid tribute to Queen Latifah, Missy Elliott and Salt-n-Pepa, women in hip-hop who made our little souls feel big against many odds. The Lox and French Montana (who sounded lazy) also participated in the Kim tribute, but the dudes had nothing on Lil Mama and Teyana Taylor, who brought the right amount of Kim virility to “No Time” and came back to finish off “All About the Benjamins,” a song that holds some of Kim’s most impeccable bars.