God In The Building
We a faculty. And I’m the team leader.
For those who haven’t been paying attention to the internet, Lil B’s New York debut last weekend was an unquestionable success. This was a slightly unexpected turn of events. You never really know how internet buzz is going to translate to the real world, more often than not it simply doesn’t. Bombing seemed especially likely given both the locale and just how divisive B has grown in recent months. When I first walked into the sold out show and saw the crowd my initial concern was that a bunch of hating ass New Yorkers had paid $8 just to boo him. But no, the joint was packed instead with Master Chefs, kids who knew every song by heart and partied their brains out. Wooh!s and Swag!s filled the room and continued to echo out through the Manhattan streets for at least the 20 or 30 minutes that followed his performance. After more than a year of blogging about all things Based to such a mixed response, to walk into that room was a really fulfilling experience. Not in the flag planting, my support made this happen self importance that so many bloggcats wallow in – I’m well aware that B makes the internet, the internet didn’t make him – but rather for the simple realization that I’m not completely crazy. Other people, breathing people, are beginning to see what I saw in the kid so many months ago.[1] There was a sense of pride to the whole experience, like watching your little brother graduate high school. I don’t think I was the only person in that room who felt that way either.
One of the early criticisms when I started posting Based music here so long ago was that I was just posting records from “my friend.” I suppose that was true to an extent, but only in the sense that everyone who listens to B’s music long enough becomes a friend of sorts. Or at least they feel that way. Admittedly this could be seen as a conflict of interests in my case, but if “friendship” is the primary currency and intent of his art – and I think it might be – then to not allow yourself to be one would be a critical misread. B’s gotten a ton of press in the aftermath of Santos – heat can make anything move – but the responses have been tentative, negative, cursory or confused. What you don’t see in the RealTalkNY video is the crowd’s margins, a minority of wall holders who watched curiously but rarely engaged. This was the audience that B’s internet detractors imagined would solely inhabit his show – mostly 25 and up, white, bearded, “hipster” chin strokers. I suspect this is where many of the people writing about the show stood, both physically and metaphorically, and I think that shows in their responses. If you’re observing B from a safe distance then you’re missing the point. The friendship model demands immersion. You ain’t in the game until you’ve heard a thousand songs. Or at least until you’ve tried to cook in the mirror.
Though B might be the first artist to put this angle at the forefront of both his marketing campaign and music, he’s not the only one working it. Right now we are witnessing a fundamental shift in how music is processed and how (minor?) stars are made. There’s Curren$y & Wiz’s virtual smoking sessions[2], Jay Electronica giving his phone number out on radio, Soulja Boy doing whatever the hell he has done for his entire career and, yes, countless Blog Friend jock strappers. (Holding hands with bloggers is just less effective and more shameless than building with fans.) The industry, of course, is still fighting this changing tide with tooth and nail. I had lunch with B and his manager last weekend and they relayed a tale about how a certain major label told them “Call us when you have a ‘Crank Dat.’” This is complete old model death grip thinking. As a career artist with a built in fanbase, B doesn’t need a “Crank Dat.” And if he did have a “Crank Dat” he wouldn’t need a major label.
Though there’s been quite a bit of press surrounding the Santos show, I haven’t seen anybody online discuss B’s actual East Coast premiere that went down the night before at Baltimore’s multi-day experimental music festival Whartscape.[3] There he played under a tarp in a converted alley/parking lot to a much smaller audience[4] in a much wider space. The crowd consisted of a mostly uninitiated but curious crowd of typical Bmore hipsters with maybe a dozen regular-ish kids int he front row (which is to say – white tees and jeans instead of gold leotards and Clockwork Orange makeup, apologies for the stereotypical short hand) who knew close to every word. One of the highlights of the night was watching this small pack of B/tards trample the rope that separated the crowd from the indoor back stage area in their attempt to thank the Based God.[5] Watching B interact with these fans is like watching a politician kiss babies. He gives every kid in the room a pound, a hug or thanks them profusely, always with a very serious warmth. He creates the most significant human connection that time permits. I say this not to question his genuineness (he does seem really humbled by the response) but to note how well B has automated the process. The previous weekend I saw an in-store non-perormance from Curren$y where he was met with a similarly ravenous crowd, swagged out rats to his pied piping. While they followed him around (literally – in circles) and took pictures, he seemed humble enough but completely bewildered. He didn’t really do anything. I suspect a lot of fans left that event feeling like I did – confused and overwhelmed, wondering why they even showed up. Based Boys left the Bmore backstage feeling like they just reunited with an old homie.
In his Times review Jon Caramanica was hyper critical of the quality of B’s rapping, which is an accurate enough interpretation. On stage B struggled with some of his more complex raps especially on “I’m God,” where he tripped up quite painfully. But this is some forest for the trees type shit because a) plenty of “great” rappers don’t rap well on stage either and b) B more than compensated with a monstrous stage presence. The crowd was eating from his palm. I know we’ve run the it doesn’t doesn’t have to be structurally great to be great art argument into the ground when talking about B but I think that idea is undeniable in context of a live show.[6] I haven’t heard from anybody, including Caramanica it seems, who didn’t have a great time at the show so it’s hard to see how he failed as an entertainer. Even if part of that entertainment involved failing as a rapper.
Admittedly he had a captive audience in NY, kids who already drank the Kool Aid, so to speak.[7] So let’s look at Baltimore for the case study instead. The casual Whartscape crowd was not there to see B. They responded positively, or at worst cordially to his music but there were a few audible groans in response to his message. Irony reigns supreme in that world and B is anything but.[8] There the song selection was basically an abbreviation of the NYC setlist but with one major exception – he closed out with “Everything,”[9] a track from his as yet unreleased, self-produced spoken word ambient record Rain In England. I’ve had Rain In England here for a few months and while it’s a very personal and honest affair there’s also something, well, not quite good about it. The early buzz about B was that he was making outsider art and England is probably the closest he comes to that standard. He has ideas about what the creation of spoken word poetry and ambient music entails but it’s quite clear he hasn’t taken a ton of time to study those forms. He plays the same chords endlessly on what sounds like the Casio ambient preset and he rambles platitudes like “I want to live life to the fullest, not think about ‘does anybody have a bullet?” But at Whartscape he sold it. I mean really sold it. As fun as all the chef’s hats and swag chanting was, “Everything” was probably his strongest performance of the weekend in terms of both stage presence and crowd response. Suddenly the curious/indifferent Whartsters were as entranced as the Master Chefs at Santos. This spoken word format strips B of his obligations to “good” rapping or the idea of what rap music is supposed to do and lets his message shine through. There he stepped on stage a stranger and likely left with a few friends. And in revisiting Rain In England today, it makes more sense, it feels more natural. The recording isn’t just the blueprint for the live experience, the experience evolves your interpretation the recording.
None of this is particularly new for hip hop: it’s always been personality driven, it’s always been community building music. The only thing that’s changed is the means and specificity of it all. Technology singles out every fan and makes them feel like they’re part of something bigger. And of course, this degree of micromarketing gets less practical with fame. It’s a lot harder to shake hands in a room of 400 fans than it is in a room of 14, as was the case with the Santos performance. But B wisely compensated with small gestures that could then be extrapolated to the individual. Things like shouting out names of Twitter followers or just rolling with it when half the crowd hopped on stage. Ending his set B immediately exited the venue the same way he came in: through the front door, one with his mass of fans.
[1] Okay, right, right, I realize that using a room full of people waving spatulas and shouting “wooh” as a sanity barometer might, in of itself, be a testament to my insanity. But it’s at least reassuring to not be going insane alone.
[2] This is sort of what I think Breihan was getting at too in his Curren$y review. I don’t think it justifies his appeal anymore than the Based movement justifies B’s laziest tracks. But it does explain it. Curren$y is our stoner friend who does nothing but rip bongs and eat Doritos, B is our hilariously bugged out friend who cracks jokes about how he looks like Mel Gibson but will also talk your ear off about spirituality or whatever. Personally, I know who I’d rather kick it with.
[3] Or at least it felt much smaller.
[4] It’s a weird scene in Baltimore to say the least and I’m unsure of the musical merit based on the few other performances I saw there. But it’s healthy that it exists, that a young person can dress up like a giraffe and go listen to a noise music in an alleyway.
[5] As you might imagine security at Whartscape was limited a couple tiny girls in sandals, whose mumbles of “uh… excuse me… guys… you can’t go back there” were no match for full scale rap fanboyism.
[6] I love Caramanica’s “eager to see just how thick the flesh was atop all the wires that make up Lil B” comment and think it could be extended to describe the motivation of just about any rap show attendee in this era. Fanboyism and curious stargazing.
[7] I think I’ve told this story before, but the first time I spoke to B i asked him about the cultish aspects of his work. His response: “But it’s the good kind of cult.” His online detractors seem very concerned about this nature of his work but I fail to see the problem. I can think of worse things for kids to fall into than a cult dedicated to positivity and agressive-but-safe sex.
[8] You tell a room full of insecure but ultimately cool kids that you’re representing for the nerds and outcasts and they are going to go crazy. You say the same thing to room full of legitimate and recovering nerds and outcasts who have spent their entire life, including the five hours spent that morning dressing up like they were on their way to see Rocky Horror Picture Show when the apocalypse struck, trying to be cool and they naturally aren’t going to be quite as pleased. Especially considering that B himself exudes such an effortless cool on stage himself.
[9] If there’s a single word that can articulate B’s mission statement, it’s that one.
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