Remy Ma had a great 2017. There was the residual success of her and Fat Joe’s “All The Way Up.” There was her BET Best Female Hip-Hop Artist award. Oh, and putting a dent in Nicki Minaj’s armor with “Shether,” one of the most vicious disses in recent hip-hop history. She also had to time to advocate for #BlackWomenEqualPay. Despite all the Ws, it feels like her narrative as of late has always been contextualized through the lens of her and someone else – whether it’s her husband Papoose, her big brother and partner-in-rhyme Fat Joe, or nemesis Nicki Minaj.
That’s going to change now with Seven Winters & Six Summers, Remy’s long-awaited solo album. The project, set to be dropped in “early 2018” according to her team, will focus on “love, marriage, self-care, motherhood, identity, and freedom.” And of course, the bars.
Remy gave us a preview of what may be to come with “Wake Me Up,” her long-awaited collaboration with Lil Kim. It looks like Lil Kim was telling the truth about her track with Remy Ma not being a diss to their shared foe Nicki Minaj. The collaboration from the two former rivals is notable for another reason – it breathes new life into Kim’s 1996 “Queen B*tch” track, reusing the enchanting Roberta Flack sample and retracing the cadence of Kim and Biggie’s classic.
Of “Wake Me Up,” Remy told Beats 1 that, “I wanted to pay homage to Kim. I feel like she is the Madonna of the hip-hop world. Her style is iconic and I wanted to pay homage to that. I was like, ‘I want you on this record, but I want you to just be Kim. I want you to be the girl that was squatting down in a leopard thong.’”
