Mirror, Mirror: Lil' Kim, dancer, earns a lil' credit

Before rapper Lil' Kim took the Dancing With the Stars stage Monday night, judge Len Goodman asked the audience if the Queen Bee could be soft, elegant and classy.

Nine weeks ago, before Lil' Kim appeared on ABC's popular dance competition, I would have said hell to the naw. Thanks to Sean "Diddy" Combs, the soundtrack of my early 20s was Lil' Kim and the Junior M.A.F.I.A.'s blinged-out version of hip-hop, but I still was far from a Lil' Kim fan.

To put it plainly, she was a skank. For those of you who don't know what that means: one who will mess with your man.

This was the woman who, in the 1997 song "It's All About the Benjamins," promised to put a hex on your family if you dared rumble with the Bee. She rapped about sex with such nastiness that I can't print half of her lyrics in this paper. She flaunted her affair with rapper Notorious B.I.G. to his wife, Faith Evans.

She has a criminal record. In 2006, Kim was released after 10 months in federal prison at Seventh and Arch Streets on a conviction of perjury and conspiracy for lying about a shooting in front of a New York radio station. Someone I'd like to have evening cocktails with? Not.

But when that cranky Goodman questioned Kim's ability to be ladylike for her waltz performance, I found myself cheering for her. She deserved a shot. After all, she started watching Dancing in prison, where it was reported she passed the time coloring, too. Another inmate suggested she be on the show, and darned if she didn't find a way to get on. Unfortunately, last night, in a shocker, she was eliminated.

Yet her nine weeks on Dancing have been impressive.

Along with her handsome partner, Derek Hough, whom Lil' Kim refers to as her Ken, Lil' Kim - the black Barbie, you know - just missed the final four.

She wowed the judges with dances including the cha-cha, the quickstep, and the samba. In the fourth week, she scored the first perfect 10 with her Argentine tango. And she was two points from a perfect score with her jive.

"I was born to move my hips," she said on one episode. "I was born wiggling."

But Lil' Kim has done more than dance on this show. The 33-year-old - her real name is Kimberly Denise Jones - has managed to redeem herself, a little. The woman other women love to hate has become likable. Unlike her competitors, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson and Bachelor reject Melissa Rycroft, both of whom ooze girl-next-door vibe, Lil' Kim has had to work twice as hard to be respected. She's using dance to make it happen.

And it worked. People have been chatting up Lil' Kim's success everywhere from blogs to bathrooms. In a Facebook query last week, I discovered that at least a half dozen of my girlfriends were rooting for her. One of my friends said that it was as if Kim wasn't the tart she remembered. We wanted the now-giggly rap star to take it all. So what if she doesn't sound like she's from Brooklyn anymore?

Of course, transforming from borderline prostitute to respectable dancer is tricky.

Most of Kim's outfits were cleavage-baring and scream "come hither" - from the white mini she wore during her first cha-cha performance to the banana-yellow samba outfit she shimmied and shook in.

And while she may have tried to channel the fairy-tale Rapunzel in a white halter gown when she danced the waltz, Lil' Kim got her highest scores when her sexuality is on display.

I cringed during week three when Goodman referred to her derriere as the "bionic booty." And Monday night's waltz garnered Kim only 25 points - she'd scored 28s on the sexier dances. "You tried to be a lady, but you are more comfortable being a tramp," judge Bruno Tonoli exclaimed.

But while I found myself rooting for Kim, there were still some things that made it hard to take her seriously. That mole on her upper lip seemed to change in size from week to week. And the plastic surgery?

She looks so different from her early days in hip-hop that a BET reporter recently asked if she had had plastic surgery to make her features look more white. Lil' Kim hung up on him.

She seems to be determined to promote this new, more demure image. Earlier this week, Lil' Kim's single "Download," featuring rapper T-Pain and Charlie Wilson, was out on the Internet, and Lil' Kim is definitely softer. Her hair still reaches the middle of her back, and while she does her fair share of gyrating, her rap style is less harsh. The video even features a cameo by Hough. Dare I say, as her Ken?

Maybe hip-hop's raunchiest star can morph into a Millennium Lady. She's not perfect, but at this point, she's definitely worth rooting for. But I still wouldn't let her near my man.