I'm glad my boyfriend is based
April 16, 2013 7:29 PM   Subscribe

FanBased: Inside Lil B's Ecstatic Cult A look at hip-hop oddball Lil B's sprawling BasedWorld community, home to some of contemporary music's most fiercely loyal, spirited, interconnected fans.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants (37 comments total) 15 users marked this as a favorite
 
This is amazing. I always knew about Lil' B and loved the "based" memes that go around online, but didn't know his following was this serious. They're like juggalos, but cooler.
posted by windbox at 8:04 PM on April 16, 2013 [1 favorite]


I first heard about Lil' B via Jesse Thorn, and yeah, he is basically all I ever want from a Bay Area rapper.
posted by GameDesignerBen at 8:21 PM on April 16, 2013


Seeing Based God around the web (tweets reposted on Brown Cardigan mostly) always makes me think about PH sticks. I never can remember which color is which. Damn you Based God!
posted by Brocktoon at 8:55 PM on April 16, 2013


I'm so happy that Lil B exists.
posted by naju at 8:59 PM on April 16, 2013 [4 favorites]


Yessssssssss!
Whoooooo!
Ya feel me?

posted by porn in the woods at 9:11 PM on April 16, 2013


I love reading about Lil B. Listening to him, generally, not so much. But like naju I'm happy that he exists.

For other people who like to read about Lil B in lieu of listening to his music, here's a track-by-track review of a 676-track "mixtape" made up of tracks Lil B apparently posted on MySpace over the course of... uh... years, I guess. Or, knowing Lil B, maybe like a week and a half.
posted by valrus at 9:40 PM on April 16, 2013 [2 favorites]


I've read the article, perused the facebook page some, and listend to a bunch of songs. I get the sense that this is a net positive. The old based guy mentions looking past the profanity, which I think I can do, but I can't tell what's going on with the misogyny and sexual currency. On some level, at least at Lil B's end, it's parody right?

I'm also always uncomfortable with online posses.
posted by cmoj at 9:48 PM on April 16, 2013


"Before I got into Lil B, I was super uptight," says Emmett Tyler, a 20-year-old who lives in Burlington, New Jersey, with his parents. "He helped me realize that you don't have to be so hard on yourself." Tyler, who's dubbed himself the Task Force Hitta, dropped out of a pricy Philadelphia art school and now works in retail while taking classes at a community college.

Huh! I... might have lived next-door to this guy three years ago. The name sounds really familiar.
posted by Rory Marinich at 10:37 PM on April 16, 2013


The old based guy mentions looking past the profanity, which I think I can do, but I can't tell what's going on with the misogyny and sexual currency.

I consistently get the impression that this is people doing this sort of thing in a knowingly ironic fashion, but not to the extent that they've actually examined what (smaller) biases they might hold in their attitudes still, or how doing it "ironically" might still actually affect people.

I feel while there's room for improvement you can at least get through to that sort of person more consistently; and given it's hardly uncommon in hiphop I think Lil B isn't the worst on that front by a long shot. He does have a mixtape titled I'm Gay which is something.
posted by solarion at 3:20 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


This makes me wonder sometimes how the careers of Sun Ra or Sun City Girls would have turned out if they'd had online social media available to help them draw fans into their alternate universes and keep them there 24/7.
posted by ardgedee at 4:24 AM on April 17, 2013 [5 favorites]


Bronies.
posted by gertzedek at 4:55 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


Where's all the porn of Lil B then?
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 5:15 AM on April 17, 2013


This makes me wonder sometimes how the careers of Sun Ra or Sun City Girls would have turned out if they'd had online social media available to help them draw fans into their alternate universes and keep them there 24/7.

Something I read when David S. Ware died was that he had the idea that Sun Ra and his Arkestra should've been made into a Saturday morning cartoon. I had never thought of this but I was immediately truly saddened it had not happened at the time.
posted by solarion at 5:32 AM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]




Lil B's music almost never really works for me, but I'm glad he exists as a personality/twitter account/cultural thing. In particular, I really, really liked the lecture he gave at NYU a while back.
posted by sparkletone at 8:25 AM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Most of his mixtapes are available from datpiff.

Explaining Lil B to a new listener is always entertaining -- I usually start by throwing out three tracks and asserting that the majority of his ouevre is somehow bounded by them.

Myspace
Wake Up Mr. Flowers
Bill Bellamy

Chasing The Rain
Hipster Girls
I'm Miley Cyrus

Motivation
I Own Swag
Cumin from Da Unda
posted by eddydamascene at 8:37 AM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


All this hipster humor makes me want to go to Starbucks so i can help keep them employed. Half-fat-half-non-extra-whip. No tip.
posted by pistolswing at 9:35 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


> Something I read when David S. Ware died was that he had the idea that Sun Ra and his Arkestra should've been made into a Saturday morning cartoon.

Every episode would be the Arkestra blimp floating into a new town and causing mysteries before floating off again (with a completely out-there sountrack pumping the whole time).

The show would be immediately followed by Scooby-Doo.

Oh to have access to the boardroom of Hannah-Barbera in 1971.
posted by ardgedee at 10:03 AM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


I had a Facebook conversation last night with a friend who is apparently based. He spat strange dogma and seemed to confirm to me that Lil B is ICP with more sexism and less homophobia. I guess I agree that he's a hell of a lot better than many mainstream rappers, and maybe it's the general aura of blind devotion (and strange sexual worship and tithing) I'm getting, but I'm not seeing how this is different from the long established rap message of, "have self confidence whether that is warranted or not."

Does the sexual thing have any relation to free love or polyamory? I feel like I'm coming at this without any knowledge of any adjacent social institutions, if that makes sense.
posted by cmoj at 10:23 AM on April 17, 2013


I don't really understand Lil B. It makes me feel old. Unlike RiFF Raff he seems completely genuine yet it seems like it should be a parody or satire. I think Lil B is what we get when an artist puts every scrap of music they ever create online for the world to see.
posted by Ad hominem at 10:31 AM on April 17, 2013


Lil B might be the first truly post-ironic figure we have in the age of social media. He occupies parody and sincerity simultaneously, often in the same song. He's self-aware and guileless at the same time. Anyone who takes away sexism/homophobia from his music really hasn't dug deep into the oeuvre much, I'm guessing. At his most genuine he openly radiates radical empathy and love, and that explicitly includes an anti-sexist, anti-homophobic message - it's such a naked display of caring that you might mistake it for a joke. He's the sort of person who at any moment might 1) brag about getting blowjobs in a way that's completely dadaist and absurd, or 2) break down crying in a pet store, sobbing "I love you" and meaning it completely sincerely. I guarantee the younger generations are intuitively responding to this sort of fluidly contradictory winking-not-winking persona. This is what being raised on social media will do to you. If Lil B is impenetrable, it might be an age thing.

(I have no idea how Lil B is even remotely like ICP or the Juggalo subculture. It just doesn't make sense to me on any level.)
posted by naju at 11:08 AM on April 17, 2013 [4 favorites]


I guess I'm officially old.

I mean I like the songs but I don't know what the hell is going on. Wet like Wonton soup? I look like JK Rowling? I should just accept it.
posted by Ad hominem at 11:38 AM on April 17, 2013


I mean I like the songs but I don't know what the hell is going on. Wet like Wonton soup?

Well, wonton soup is wet, isn't it?

I'm pretty sure I know the "meaning" behind Wonton Soup (and yeah duh it is sexual though to me the smell of really stinky brie or cooking mushrooms is way more related than the appearance of wonton soup....) but I could be wrong and also going all Rap Genius on everything kills the spirit of music and pretty much ensures you'll never fanute your understanding to a higher level.

And, on a quick check, Rap Genius disagrees with my interpretation, actually, ha ha.
posted by Juliet Banana at 12:31 PM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


How is this not wildly sexist and materialist? I realize that it strays into parody, but I get no sense from either Lil B or the community that this attitude isn't considered cool.

I want to believe that a benevolent force for acceptance and positivity is organically sweeping the nation's youth, so someone please explain what I'm missing.
posted by cmoj at 1:19 PM on April 17, 2013


Well, wonton soup is wet, isn't it?

I don't know what he means by wet.

I see everything through the lens of "trap" rap and Raekwon style mafia rap. To me "wet" is a PCP reference and "cooking" or "chef" is a reference to cooking crack. "yams" is a reference to crack before it is split in to packs, "work" is uncut cocaine.

This is pretty mainstream. Check out Jay Z doing the cooking dance in the video of Empire State Of Mind where he says "catch me in the kitchen" when talking about his "stash spot".

So this is my issue. I can't tell if Lil B is re contextualizing trap rap stuff, or what he is doing.
posted by Ad hominem at 1:33 PM on April 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


ad hominem, he uses wet to mean flashy ('dripping' jewelry = wet) and in reference to female arousal.

Another popular use of wet, not in Wonton Soup --> blood is wet, someone gets 'wet up' = someone gets shot.

Now you're caught up!


Serious Lil B raps:
Keep Sagging
Giving Up

If Lil B had mainstream cachet, we wouldn't have to deal with bullshit like LL Cool J and Brad Paisley releasing "Accidental Racist".
posted by MetalFingerz at 2:38 PM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Like I said I'm old. He could have stuck with iced out like on Pretty Bitch to make it easy but he had to switch it up to a word that already meant PCP.

I always liked his track with Tony Yayo Based
posted by Ad hominem at 2:55 PM on April 17, 2013


I can't believe I never heard this Tony Yayo ft Lil B Trap Ball. I think I answered my own questions about Lil B's relationship to trap.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:06 PM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


This to me reads like what The Unified Scene wants to be, but we don't have the numbers or the cred. I'm glad it's out there, and I'm glad it's working for people. And who cares if some songs are sexist and materialistic? Most popular music is, and the over the top nature of it seems to give rap lots of its power.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 3:44 PM on April 17, 2013


And who cares if some songs are sexist and materialistic? Most popular music is...

Most pop music doesn't spawn a communal movement (that seems to be getting a little cultish) ostensibly promoting positivity and tolerance while not only promoting repressive attitudes, but using internet-mob tactics to silence oppositional viewpoints.

the over the top nature of it seems to give rap lots of its power.

This is precisely my concern, because I see young men, especially, interpreting that over the top sexism and materialism as a template for their expectations about how their lives should be.

The more I look into this and think about it, the worse this whole thing looks. This whole thing just entered me consciousness last night, so I'm really trying to see how any of this is a thing to celebrate as so many seemingly thinking individuals say it is.
posted by cmoj at 5:02 PM on April 17, 2013


As someone who's just getting into rap - and popular rap like A$AP Rocky - part of what it does is let fans 'borrow' the rapper's self-esteem and outsize posturing for their own lives. But I don't like passing moral judgement on art, or think that art should have any morality.
posted by Charlemagne In Sweatpants at 7:08 PM on April 17, 2013


I already feel like I defend rap too much on metafilter.

I really have no answer to the sexism. It is kind of crazy really. Unfortunately when we get a Lupe Fiasco track addressing it, for better or worse he gets torn to shreds as well.

For every song like Pusha T's I Still Wanna that makes it seem like crime and selling drugs are the best things ever there is another that offers a counter. This has pretty deep roots in rap from Slick Rick's Children's Story to BDP's Illegal Business to more recent stuff like Kanye West's We Don't Care and Tyler's 48.

The bottom line is that rap reflects sexism and materialism already present in society.Rappers didn't invent it and if they just STFU about the "bitches and gold chains" it wouldn't just go away. Could they all just start doing some backpacker consciousness rap? Maybe, but that isn't what artists do, and it isn't right of us to ask. We cant blame them for ills that are endemic to society. I mean, we don't blame other murder rate in Nevada on Johnny Cash signing a song about shooting a man in Reno.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:35 PM on April 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


God that is a terrible link for We Don't Care, should have listened to the whole thing. I'd link another one but it will probably be worse. Just buy it, Kanye could probably use some fuel for his jet or something anyway.
posted by Ad hominem at 8:49 PM on April 17, 2013


No need to defend rap. I listen to rap and hip-hop, and I'm aware of the systemic issues and allow for a certain amount of idiomatic sexist/violent/etc. language. Hell, I couldn't listen to Wu Tang if I didn't.

My issue with Lil B, and probably more with the based community is that it seems to be willfully hypocritical on these issues, but I can't tell if I'm missing something. I mean, 2 Chainz doesn't claim to offer philosophical salvation.
posted by cmoj at 9:31 AM on April 18, 2013 [1 favorite]


I can't speak for all in the based community, but on Facebook sexist comments made by fans get shot down pretty quickly (by other fans). However, there are plenty of sexist dudes who claim to be based. They are fake based, obviously, but Lil B may invite those kinds of fans with some of his more graphic songs. The over-the-top sexist stuff gets all the attention on the internet, but Lil B has released thousands of songs. Many of them preach respect, self-esteem, doing your own thing, and related positive themes. I think it's unfair to indict Lil B based on a small sample of his songs (listened to out of context), but I don't think it's surprising.
posted by MetalFingerz at 11:46 AM on April 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


Also, here's 2 Chainz offering philosophical salvation: Ghetto Dreams feat. Scarface & John Legend
posted by MetalFingerz at 2:56 PM on April 18, 2013


No need to defend rap. I listen to rap and hip-hop

Since we are all cool here Ghostface's new stuff with Adrian "more RZA than RZA" Younge is great The Sure Shot. Maybe someone should do a Wu post for the 20th anniversary of 36 chambers if there hasn't been already.
posted by Ad hominem at 3:55 PM on April 18, 2013 [2 favorites]


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