In a recent interview with The New York Times, veteran comic Chris Rock addressed the practice of grading comedians by their small-stakes performances in low-profile clubs, their effective warm-up routines. "When you're workshopping it, a lot of stuff is bumpy and awkward... [A comedian] is essentially in the gym," he said. "You're mad at Ray Leonard because he's not in shape, in the gym? That's what the gym's for." I immediately considered the career of Lil B, an artist who refuses-- or is flatly unable-- to trade his metaphorical treadmill for the ring. He exists in an unapologetic state of workshop. His best mixtapes are still bad and his worst mixtapes are still good, because they are all so delightfully bumpy and awkward. There is still no endgame, which makes Lil B at once the most exhausting, unmanageable, and-- even though his catalog is wildly uneven by all standards-- the most reliable artist we have.
For those out there who haven't kept up with his inhuman pace, here's a quick rundown of what Lil B has churned out in his workshop since he last appeared in these pages: The #1 Bitch mixtape, which samples "The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)" and includes the appetizingly titled Based Freestyle "Ima Eat Her Ass". The Basedprint 2 mixtape (no first volume necessary). The hilariously gruff Trapped in Basedworld mixtape. A highly confusing hour and a half of instrumental "classical music" called Choices and Flowers. Another installation of his Flame mixtape series, this time in honor of the color green. Four more mixtapes, each 16 tracks or more. An 855-song Based Freestyle compilation for which you'd need to carve out five gigs of hard drive space and hours to complete. It is staggering: You could listen to no one but Lil B in 2012 and never once long for new material. His workhorse stamina makes Curren$y look like a sprinter.
His latest mixtape, Obama Basedgod-- a title uttered on "I Own Swag", a track off God's Father and one of his most marketable to date-- is perhaps his most straightforward, rap-rap release since 2011's I'm Gay (I'm Happy). As you might expect from a release referencing a United States president, Obama Basedgod tackles social ills the only way Lil B knows how: through a free-flowing and meditative lens, wobbling between heartfelt and absurdist winking. But more often than not he's heartfelt here, openly confessing his day-to-day worries with more specificity and less theatricality than we're used to. "I ain't got no fuckin' problems/ Actually I'm lyin', man, I got a lot of problems," he raps on "Government Imported", a track that lifts the beat from Jay-Z's "This Can't Be Life".
On the production end, Lil B stokes nostalgia for the Diplomats' or Hov's heyday with sped-up soul and Motown singles throughout. He's been so freewheeling in recent months ("Bitch, I'm a cow, swag!" A song rapped in Spanglish called "Gato Gato"! A tribute to NYU students!) that it's revelatory to hear him discuss something as simple as his own financial troubles. "Freeway trips and I ain't have no money/ You can look me in my eyes, I look fine/ I practice every day to hide the pain inside," he raps on "Freeway Trips". The prismatic title track, on which he raps, "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious/ Dump his head in the car/ Dump his body in the ocean" is misleading in its whimsicality.
Despite its charms, Obama Basedgod is often downright boring, joyless, and indistinguishable from hours upon hours of the rapper's throwaway material. If Lil B whittled his work down to a best-of compilation he'd have several top-shelf rap albums; nothing from Obama Basedgod would appear on it. But I much prefer the gentle view from inside his workshop to the possibility of a polished final product that excludes a mixtape like this one. Lil B is the poster child for the John Lennon-coined cliché of "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans" in that he refuses to make plans at all. His work is all process, full of unedited life. Obama Basedgod is ultimately an insignificant piece to the Lil B puzzle, but that's the point-- without the excess, the dependable comforts of the curious hum of his machine would fade to black.
