HOW MUSIC WORKS
A prolific California rapper whose path to success has been as unorthodox as his style and a legend who has written the book on the record industry are among this weekend’s Pop Montreal highlights.
“People are looking at me like I’m really saving their lives, and saving their days – it’s deeper than rap.”
LIL B
Berkeley, Calif., rapper Lil B will matter-offactly state that he’s changed the world; it’s just hard to determine whether he means the real one, or merely the idyllic one inside his own mind.
There’s no question the staggeringly prolific 23-yearold — who has at least 13 mixtapes to his name just this year, including one with 855 songs — has a ravenous fan base that hangs on his every new age aphorism. Whether the social media maven’s 500,000 or so Twitter followers truly feel inspired after digesting one of his selfhelp, subconscious-mining, flow-less “Based” raps or are simply entranced by his constant, consummately weird and wildly uneven output remains a question only the Based God can answer.
Luckily for Lil B — real name Brandon McCartney — he also happens to be the Based God, sort of.
“Lil B writes the music. The Based God is just who I want to be, he’s the perfect one,” he says by phone from his hometown, where he was shooting a music video for his upcoming rock album California Boy. “He’s my motivation, that’s who I strive to be. He comes out at particular times.”
He pauses to think of the last time his innerdoppeldeity made an ap- pearance. “It’s been years since the Based God has been filmed, so I can’t really say. But, he made history with music, myself and him. We made history by being the first hip hop artist to make a classical music album. Who else has done that? Any other rapper has ever done that? No.”
The classical music album he’s referring to is also his self-anointed first official album following a three-year deluge of free mixtapes: the instrumental release Choices & Flowers, which, surprisingly enough, debuted at number six on Billboard’s New Age chart this past June. “I was on the charts with Yanni,” he boasts. “So shout outs to Yanni, John Tesh and everybody else.”
For those who have followed his career — which started as a teenage prodigy rapping about shoes with party-rap crew The Pack — his emergence on the New Age charts is just another feather in his garish cap, fitted of unusual accomplishments. Among some of the independent artist’s strangest feats: he penned a self-help book, shook up rap’s misogynistic status quo by releasing the I’m Gay (I’m Happy) mixtape in 2011 and last April gave a motivational speech at NYU.
“The world’s changed now. I’m more than a rapper,” he says. “People are looking at me like I’m really saving their lives, and saving their days — it’s deeper than rap. There’s a lot of stuff the media isn’t showing; the media’s not going to talk about Lil B, that lives have been saved, that there’s this kid is out there telling people to be happy and positive.”
One thing he can admittedly be credited for is popularizing the well-intentioned, loosely defined expression Based, transforming it into a sort of sanguine life mantra rooted in relentless positivity and honesty. “Based was actually a term that was widespread in Berkeley,” he says. “At the time it meant being tired, or not all the way there. I took something that sprouted f rom the negative and turned it into the positive.”
In terms of his staggered, freestyle raps, where he’s prone to losing track midsentence and rarely bothers to rhyme, he’s an original. When it comes to intentions, he compares himself favourably to the late 2Pac. “Only in terms of authenticity and truth when people hear me rap,” he says.
The comparison also spawns another idea: his Lil B and Based God personas performing together through the magic of holograms. “How else are they going to meet the Based God?” He wonders. “There has to be a chance for people to see what I see, and if that’s a way to contact the Based God, then maybe.”
Lil B performs Friday night at Club Soda, 1225 St. Laurent Blvd., as part of the POP Montreal festival. Tickets cost $28 and can be purchased at popmontreal.com.