The Based God will soon be in the building. For those Bay Area fans who missed Lil B’s appearance at Shoreline Amphitheatre’s recent Rolling Loud Fest, here’s another opportunity to catch the most outrageously prolific rapper in the game. As for all the drama that went down in Mountain View—Brandon’s sound equipment was allegedly jacked by A Boogie wit da Hoodie and things got scrappy backstage—it’s all been squashed.
In the immediate aftermath of the incident, B went on stage to explain why he wouldn’t be playing, but insisting he wouldn’t be holding a grudge:
“I don’t promote violence, I’m never with the violence,” he said. After the incident, B expressed his willingness to let bygones be bygones, tweeting: “it’s all good I love y’all and I forgive y’all.”
Longtime fans of the East Bay rapper and former member of The Pack shouldn’t be surprised. On Twitter and in his music, the Berkeley rapper has long preached acceptance and always maintains a positive outlook. He’s like a walking, talking Public Service Announcement.
His “Based God” mantra is a simple philosophy of being true to yourself or having a base, so to speak, of positivity. When Lil B was growing up the term “basehead,” was commonly used as a pejorative to describe a crack user or someone who has lost themselves in drugs. He spun the negative term into a positive one by calling referring to himself as “based.”
Sometimes his deliberate self-deprecation leads to death threats, like when he embraced the LGBTQ community by titling his album I’m Gay. While the hate via Twitter flows in constantly with rappers like The Game calling him “the whackest rapper of all time.”
And yet, it would seem B is doing something right, as he has managed to consistently grab attention in the national music media. Even the sports world has taken notice from time to time, having fun with Lil B when he casts “hexes” on players. He threw the “Based God Curse” at Kevin Durant back when he was playing on the Oklahoma City Thunder. Of course, B lifted the spell when Durant joined the local Golden State Warriors. It all depends which side of his you’re on.
He remains a prolific independent recording artist with an immense catalog of 49 mixtapes, 10 studio albums and one EP and counting. His latest studio album Black Ken is a culmination of all things hyphy and funky from this mountain of rap music. It was given a very high 8.5 rating on the music blog Pitchfork.
Watch Lil B in “Vans,” one of The Pack’s biggest hits from 2004.
