October 09, 2007

Lil Mama Celebrates Births Of 'Hip-Pop' And Herself

By Jayson Rodriguez, with reporting by Yasmine Richard (MTV.com)

Lil Mama may be young, but her sensibilities reach a bit beyond her teen years. So when it came time to celebrate her 18th birthday, the Brooklyn, New York, rapper admitted that the only plans she had were to spend time with family. No big blowouts. No fancy dinners.

"I want to spend time with my family, to go back to New York City," she said last month at Dub magazine's Custom Auto Show in California. "Just celebrate the day I was born, however it may be.

"It's huge," Lil Mama added of her birthday on October 4. "It's major. [But] it don't get crazy like that. I think if I don't do it [relaxed], then I'll take that day and use it in the wrong way. Celebrating the day I was born and being around the people I love will make me happy, seriously."

Another birth that the pint-size wordsmith takes seriously is that of the "hip-pop" movement that she and fellow dancing rap acts like Soulja Boy and Jason Fox have ushered in.

According to Lil Mama, that's what her outfit at last month's Video Music Awards represented. The baby costume she wore symbolized the birth of a new genre, she said.

"The birth of hip-pop is more than just pop culture with the dancing and the singing and the rapping and the writing that I do," she explained. "It's that too, but it's also my way of life."

Fittingly enough, "Life" will be the next single from Mama's upcoming debut, Voice of the Young People. (The album is slated to drop in 2008, although no release date is scheduled yet, according to a rep from Jive Records.)

"Life is really a deep joint," the rapper said. "I have so many joints on my album, but what makes them a part of the album is that people have a chance to get into you more. And they should get the album to get into you more. A lot of the singles are really fun and something that everybody is gonna love. But I also have faith in my deep records to come out [as singles] and one day I'm gonna see to it that [they do]."