- Biography
- Lil B AKA the based god AKA Brandon McCartney is the 22 year old rapper who has in the last few years released thousands of songs, a book, five albums and over two dozen mix-tapes. He recently gave a speech at New York University, unscripted, in which he discussed topics from hydraulic fracking, architecture and love, lots and lots of love. He lives by his own philosophy Based culture which is seemingly just ultra-liberal and is the most peculiar performer you will probably ever listen to. Lil B is the child of internet pornography and meme culture he lives and breathes them. If he isn’t asking to “fuck your bitch” the misogynist language an anomaly in his otherwise pro-gay pro-woman philosophy then he is probably posting pictures on his Facebook captioned with “thank you based god” a meme that can be applied to seemingly any picture. He needs attention, he needs views and he needs buzz and he has got it all, all in absolute abundance. He is not just on the internet; he is in many ways the internet encapsulating its essence. More specifically he is sites like 4chan which he has referenced, he is underground enough not to be noticed by the news but accessible enough to be seen by those who want to. He is Lil /b/.
The success of Lil B is troubling to many rap purists he releases ‘RARE BASED FREESTYLES” in which he seems to just find a topic and incoherently mumble words along that are nonsensical ,repetitive and take a large metaphorical shit on the graves of the founders of hip hop music. They normally have a title and much repeated hook based on a celebrities name take tracks like ‘I’m Paris Hilton’, ‘I’m Miley Cyrus’ and ‘I’m Charlie Sheen’ these aren’t songs in the conventional sense at all this is the equivalent of Tao Lin’s recent spate of tweeting the first thing that came to his head which he subsequently described as a nightmare. However nightmarish for Lil B it is far from these songs have created the substantial success, albeit underground that he has achieved.
Too Short the man who discovered Lil B and the Pack said when he was 16 he would go into the booth with a beat and record “freestyle albums” where he would say the first things that came into his head he described it as “whack” well the style has not changed, at all. We still see the release en mass of these songs. They are still essentially Lil B rapping a stream of consciousness almost involuntarily over a beat about all manner of subjects some of which he is less than informed about. It’s still unconventional, it’s still unorthodox and it’s still whack, but it’s pure. His guard is down, the gimmicks and facades that have infiltrated rap music in the last ten years are nowhere to be seen and that puts him above most of the ‘hot new rappers bout to blow up’ that we see time after time.
He may not be able to write as well as Kendrick Lamar or be as witty as Das Racist or Hopsin (depending on your taste) but he taps into the very essence of art in a way few people have ever been brave enough to do. Some of it doesn’t ‘go hard, some of it doesn’t rhyme, some of it doesn’t even make sense but hey have you listened to the WU LYF album? Have you heard the latest tape by the Arctic Monkeys? Fuck; listen to the white album! Do the lyrics make sense when read literally? No, why should they? Should not all art require more than a second’s interpretation? When you start reading in to songs like ‘Swag Jerry Rice’ and ‘I Own Swag’ then maybe you can find your own meaning maybe you can ‘get it’ the way some people have got it. Then again maybe you won’t, maybe you will still see him as the most ignorant person in the world because maybe he is.
With regard to mainstream culture Lil B success has probably came mostly in terms of his cooking dance which accompany his rare based freestyles and is basically the based god pretending to cook a meal with moves including chopping, stirring, and shovelling (presumably for when the vegetables are dug out the ground).He however has no trappings of success as a commercial musician, no awards, no TV performances and no real wider value but he is the epitome of a viral success plastering your newsfeed on twitter, facebook and probably myspace if you can still remember your log in address with links to his newest mixtapes.
As underground rappers go Lil B is up there with the most successful think Das Racist, ASAP Rocky and of course OFWGKTA. Long before Tyler, the Creator and his clan achieved success with their “kill people, burn shit, fuck school” mantra which shocked suburban America into a state of 1998 Marshall Mathers hysteria he and Lil B where mentioned in countless articles together, the similarities in the two is apparent young rebellious and with a palpable disdain for the current state of rap music. However Tyler always had the scope to move onto something else, something a lot more mainstream and accessible to the masses for example the radio friendly ‘Analog’ and the couple of love songs he has on his album for Lil B to appeal to the masses he would have to drop the thing that makes him so appealing, his brilliantly warped personality.
To further confuse about his intention not all his songs are based freestyles he also releases equally as interesting and puzzling half new age, half spoken word albums it is what makes putting him in a box so difficult. Unlike Tyler whose over obsession with not being labelled has earned him a big fat label reading twat stuck right on his forehead, Lil B genre is constantly in flux. His much talked about album ‘I’m Gay (I’m Happy)’ is one of the most progressive rap albums of the year with beats including a goo-goo dolls sample so heavily distorted it now seems like it is being sang by a ghost nursing a two week old cold. It has moments on it so poignant that they are genuinely moving ,on the track ‘I hate myself’ Lil B talks about the life of a prostitute and imagines what it would be like if his mother was one. He talks about young prostitutes in his area “I see young girls hanging off the corner, And they searching for love in the wrong space, Gave her mind to a pimp, now he's changing faces”.
It plays on the same levels that Nas Illmatic does, here is a kid sat up against the window watching with a notepad and a couple of biros scribbling everything he sees down. Yet in many other videos he is gallivanting around looking like the most irritating fuck in the world. In the video for Breathe Slow off one of his more recent mixtapes ‘Godsfather’ he walks around what I presume is his house wearing a cowboy hat holding a toy gun with a tight yellow vest on whilst a girl dances in the background it contains the line “SpongeBob BasedGod! You're so funny!”. He is stupid and immature but is seemingly oblivious to it, why else would he still bombard us with tracks of this nature. Whilst tracks like “I hate myself” connect to the listener on grounds that quite frankly they are pretty good tracks like Breathe Slow appeal to us in the same way the opening auditions to talent shows do.
Of course he is in no way oblivious to how people receive some of his music and if anything he plays up to it for attention. Lil B has taken the facets of what made Soulja Boy and the rise in popularity in genres such as sissy bounce and intensified them about a million times the result is fascinating. He is half joking, and probably most popular with those who get this. He resides in a land where to become more available to a wider audience would ridicule those that like him at the moment. It would insult their intelligence for ‘getting’ him, if there is anything indeed to ‘get’ in the first place. He lives on the precipice of success and has probably by his own doing been cemented there. For most this fabled land of underground music that Lil B finds himself in is just that, fabled. No artist or group really has no commercial appeal of course Justin Bieber will sell more records then Death Grips buts that not to say that the latter would completely flunk if marketed for the wider public. It’s why people can get annoyed at their favourite “underground” artist for selling out but still buy their new album anyway no one truly has only underground appeal or success.
However Lil B blurs this statement. It is hard, maybe impossible to imagine Lil B even appearing on a television show, hell Das Racist performance on Fallon was crucified and they are a hell of a lot less abrasive then “Gold mouth, bitch and I look like a princess” and songs titled ‘Look like Jesus’ and ‘I’m God’. Of course he could a la Odd Future drop the real uniqueness in his act. Don’t get me wrong I know that pre OF we did not live in a world without horrorcore but we lived in a world where it didn’t seem dated and irrelevant that was their edge, listen to Tyler’s guess spots on tracks like ‘Martians vs Goblins’ and ‘Trouble on my mind’ and you soon realise they are pretty much interchangeable with a lot of other rappers. It is hard however to imagine Lil B without the freestyles, the dance and the tweeting he is not making conventional rap music most the time he cannot just lose that side to him and become a Kendrick Lamar knock off because he’s not good enough. Dropping all this would be dropping a large proportion of not just what makes him special but of his act as a whole.
He has worked with the likes of Lil Wayne and Soulja Boy on songs for mixtapes has appealed on the XXL freshmen list he has brushed against the sides of mainstream but these three endeavours are probably still too submerged to be classed as popular and it would appear to be as close as he will ever get to it. The man has millions of Youtube hits but no record contract he is an artist who could only exist in the world of ultra-accessible video and downloadable music because nobody and I mean nobody is walking to their local shop to hear him say “Hilton, Hilton, Bitch I’m Paris Hilton” a million times in three minutes, neither are they going to go to the same shop rightly or wrongly to hear him talk about how racism still affects the black community. This schizophrenic personality he possesses contradicts both sides of itself and subsequently undermines him yet without it he wouldn’t be anywhere near as popular as he is.
His appeal isn’t his serious work (or at least the work I assume he is serious about) like angles exodus and I’m gay or his less than serious work the based freestyles it’s the fact that one person can release both. The freestyles have created the buzz, they have given him an edge he may or may not deserve whilst the other tracks have legitimized him, even if he is still looking up the noses at most rap critics. Lil B is both living in a world of parody and a world of reality much like the way /b/ can coexist with threads at polar opposites with one another on it. Break it down to its most rudimental axis and the fact /b/ can have threads discussing and debating issues from the Arab spring to globalisation whilst having one simply entitled “Girls with big tits” directly next to each other is ridiculous and by that logic the same can be said about Lil B.
But alas Lil B knows that he can be ridiculous it’s exactly why he puts such a strange mix of music out. It’s too simplistic to say he is trolling because there’s a lot more to it, he owes much of his success to the popularity or lack of for his based freestyles but also to his experimentalism he has just released a classical album it’s all part of his image, the maverick. That’s why the New Yorker was so wrong when it said referred to Lil B as having “Dumb Brilliance” there is nothing dumb about the man; he is the antithesis of dumb. He has singlehandedly turned every commentator head into complete mush. Lil B can be a caricature of candid, he can be the safe search off Google image search of tits: fun, bouncy and simple but delve a little deeper into him as a person and you realise he is a bit more complex he can show glimpses of true enlightenment and when put to good use is truly changing the way we both connect and listen to hip hop music as a whole. He is the personification of /b/ culture and the true “fucking walking paradox” and we, as listeners should be thankful for it.
- Location
- #SWAG #TYBG
- Interests
- Lil B
- Occupation
- Lil B's Task Force
- What are you here for?
- Hax
- Gender
- male
- Flag
- United States
