Some people just own years. Pablo Picasso in 1903, Brian Eno in 1978, Larry Bird in 1986, Lil B in 2013. No one word can best sum up the Based God’s year of intellectual, artistic, and cultural triumph, but we can all agree that in these last 365 days, one man embodied greatness in complete totality. We are blessed to have him lead us to the dawning sunrise of 2014 and beyond. The idea of looking back on Lil B’s impossible achievements this year is a task far too vast for any historian, but we must do our best to pay any homage we can to the man who found the light.Like all epics, this one started modestly. When Lil B surprise-released his self-titled second studio album in January of 2013, expectations were not enormously high. To this point he’s just been a moderately-silly rapper with a lot of heart. Could a Bay kid with his own self-imposed mythology really capture the world? Wasn’t he already washed up? Isn’t Riff Raff the better rapper? Didn’t we unfollow him years ago? Man, who cares about Lil B anymore?
That was until we heard the first track, “Florence Nightingale,” which blared into our soul with a fiery, double-jointed guitar harmony courtesy of Yngwie Malmsteen and B himself. Where did he learn how to play that way? It was a question that quickly faded out of our concern after we understood that the record was exactly 24 hours long. We were all in a trance; Lil B’s opus froze the world. From the beautiful field recordings taken from the psychedelic poetry of South America’s lost tribes, to his world-smashing 12-part urban reinterpretation of John Milton’s Paradise Lost. Even radio single “Milk and Cheerios” was inescapable, and who could forget the 20-minute closer? The gorgeous symphony that gathered Paul McCartney, Roger Daltrey, Mick Jagger, and Brian Wilson as a magnificent barbershop quartet? Truly and unequivocally, it was the album the world was waiting for since the inception of popular music.Lil B the album would promptly break the way we cover music, mostly because it invented an entirely new vocabulary of what music could be. It received the first ever “11.0” from Pitchfork Media, who spent the rest of year solely talking about Lil B’s masterpiece. When reached for comment, Pitchfork founder Ryan Schreiber reportedly said “I dunno man, I think we’re done here.”Alternatively, Lil B would go down as the man who destroyed Rolling Stone. After David Fricke gave the album an uncomfortable 3.5 stars (calling it “overlong” among other things) millions of newly minted Lil B disciples marched on the old-media stalwart’s New York headquarters and burnt it to the ground. The land is now being used as a communal greenhouse.After accepting his appointment as the national poet laureate, it seemed Lil B was at the peak of his powers. Where could he possibly go now? He was just a musician, after all. Even after the Based God singlehandedly evolved the very concept of music, we were still foolishly underestimating him. In fact, if you play back the video of his poem at the inauguration in slow motion, you can see him turn to Obama and whisper the crucial words “bring me to NASA.”
Nobody knows the specifics of how Lil B’s top-secret space mission came about, but it’s clear that the NASA team knew who they were dealing with. What we do know is that on May 5th, 2013, a small one-man probe was launched from the coastline of Puerto Rico. Its destination was unknown.It was reported that Lil B landed on the surface of Venus on May 10th, approximately 3:45 A.M. PST. He stepped from the probe and looked around the charred, barren, toxic wasteland. With one deep breath, he sucked the entirety of Venus’ chortling atmosphere into his body, and into the machinery of his blessed internal organs. With his lungs pumping and compressing, he exhaled, transforming the once burning air into something calm, idyllic, and permanently blissful. A single tear dripped from his cheek and on to the ground, replacing the rocky apocalypse into an enrapturing verdant panorama of good soil and good vibes. Lil B looked to the sky, and called down an asteroid made of kittens and puppies from the great dark beyond. They splashed in the happiest crater you’ll ever see, and started to explore this brave new landscape. This was the new Earth. The Based Earth. Ours to inherit from the goodness of Lil B.When Lil B returned, there weren’t any more questions. On August 4th, President Obama fired Joe Biden, and made Lil B his Vice President. Three days later, Obama himself resigned, making Lil B the 45th and everlasting president of the United States Of America. Congress willfully dissolved, making Lil B our autonomous and benevolent leader. In next couple of months, every country in the world united under Lil B’s new order. His laws were brave and wise, he gave every man woman and child their own ghettoblaster, he made the “I’m God’ instrumental our united national anthem, and he made lightsabers real. Using his profound adeptness in physical and genetic sciences, Lil B cloned Abraham Lincoln, and made him second-in-command—overseeing the flourishing frontier of The Based Earth.Hand in hand we’ve marched with Lil B to the full potential of humankind. Here’s to us, and 2013, the beginning of the Based Era.Luke Winkie takes things from his brain and puts them on the Internet on Twitter - @luke_winkie
Advertisement
Advertisement