On to the Big House

When Lil’ Kim contemplates the yearlong prison stretch she’s staring down – it will commence Monday – she doesn’t admit to worrying about the danger of other inmates.

Or the depression over confinement.

Or the revulsion over the prospect of some really bad meals.

Instead, she complains: “It’s so frustrating that I won’t be able to promote my album.”

She’s certainly making up for lost time now. During a 40-minute interview, the rapper mentions the release date of her CD no less than five times (Sept. 27, for the record).

Kim pushes a forthcoming DVD (in which she’ll talk about her trial) three times and, for a final flourish, yells the title of her album – “The Naked Truth” – four times directly into the tape recorder.

She willingly answers most nonlegal questions, but with great deliberation – no surprise given the fact that the Lil’ one is going to the Big House precisely for the words she offered to a grand jury.

On July 6, 2005, 30-year-old Kimberly Jones was sentenced to a 366-day stretch in the slammer for perjury – something she admitted to just before her sentencing.

She was found guilty for testimony she gave regarding a 2001 shootout between her posse and that of rival female emcee Foxy Brown in front of the New York studio of radio station Hot 97.

The pixieish rapper testified that she had not seen her manager, Damion Butler, at the scene, and that she didn’t recognize a longtime associate, Suif Jackson, who allegedly was there as well.

The judge found her statements to be “shockingly untrue” and “an insult to the system.” He asserted that Kim was using her loyalty to old friends as an excuse “to protect violent men with guns.”

The rapper won’t speak about the judge’s comments but says of her sentence: “I definitely don’t feel that I deserved what I got.”

She likens herself to Martha Stewart, whom she considers something of a role model.

“Her courage and strength is definitely encouraging,” she says, adding that Stewart “came out (of jail) looking better than when she went in.”

Kim needs to look spiffy herself for the camera crew that has been shadowing her almost everywhere she goes these days. Like seemingly half the American population, she’s being filmed for an upcoming reality show about her life.

She vigorously denies reports that she was working on the series during her trial. The show she was then filming was a reality makeover series for VH1, she says, which the network says is tentatively slated to air later this year.

The reality-series item, Kim says, is but one of many misconceptions about her – chief among them being that she’s a diva.

“I’m definitely not,” she announces before explaining away the most recent “diva-licious” gossip about her.

According to press reports, Kim got into a tussle with a flight attendant after she gave the rapper a seat she didn’t like.

“Do you know who I am?” she allegedly said to the attendant.

Kim asserts that she in fact gave up her seat so an older couple could sit together and later was told by the attendant to “sit in the back of the plane.”

The attendant “started yelling at me for no reason,” she says. “Just really, really rude. It was prejudiced. And I didn’t like it.”

Kim claims it was a pair of fans who said, “Do you know who she is?”

The rapper’s new single, “Shut Up,” deals with such rumors and accusations, but in a witty – and funky – way. Kim claims all the snide whispers don’t “bother me to the point where it makes me upset. I laugh it off – because I’m fabulous!”

She isn’t laughing so hard at other points on the album, however, especially the ones where she snipes back at people she feels betrayed her during the trial. There are multiple allusions to cowards, snitches and turncoats.

The likely targets would be two members of her old group, Junior M.A.F.I.A.: James “Lil’ Cease” Lloyd and Antoine “Banger” Spain. They testified at her trial that they witnessed her at the radio station incident with the same two associates she claimed not to have seen.

Despite all her controversies, Kim says she doesn’t want “people to get too lost in what I went through. Let’s talk about where I’m going.

“This album is going to do exceptionally well, which only means a brighter future for me.

“Lil’ Kim,” she announces, “is going to be OK.”