I remember back in the 90s when I was a kid, the first rapper I heard that had "lil" in their name was "Lil Bowwow" and that was mostly because he was a kid and basically a mini-Snoop Dogg.
But then you started hearing other "Lils" popping up, like Lil Kim, Lil Zayne, Lil Wayne, Lil Nas...etc.
Where does the "Lil" title originate from, and how did the mainstream trend begin, and why has it persisted for so long?
Originally the prefix 'lil' came from street gangs in the US. Hau Latufeku explains it in this quote: “Back in the day it was used by people that were coming up under someone. If they were your OG (original gangster), if they brought you up on the streets, you were like the second version of them.”
Now let's look at how the 'lil' prefix crossed over to rap. In the late 70's and early 80's there were some gangbangers that were known with the 'lil' prefix that did rap, but none of them really had impact. However in the late 80's this would change. Drugdealer turned rapper lil' troy became mainstream and had a few hits. He is the first important figure in rap using 'lil'
It is after this that the use of 'lil' became trend. Suddenly the likes of 'Lil bruce' and 'Lil jon' came onto the scene. However the biggest boom came when Lil Kim dropped her first solo album in 1996. Lil Kim, known as the queen of New York and often regarded as the greatest female rapper of all time obviously made the prefix more popular. Around this time the prefix had little to do with street culture anymore. Around 1996 Lil Wayne was also slowly rising to prominence, and his first solo album dropped on 1999.
With so many popular rappers using lil as in their stage namers young up and coming rappers started modeling their names after their idols, and with the years the use of the prefix snowballed.