Why Lil B “The BasedGod” is the Smartest Rapper of this Generation The the methodical and mysterious man that is Brandon McCartney aka Lil B The Based God is without a doubt the most ingenious rapper of his generation. Lil B, hailing from the Bay Area, initially started out in the rap group “The Pack” at the age of 16, where he began his imprint on pop culture with their hit song titled “Vans” garnering the attention of many teens who wore the already popular shoe brand. This man has taken the world by storm with his innovative style, his usage of the internet, and his strong character. No rapper in this generation has had the amount of ingenuity and cleverness that Lil B has showcased throughout his musical career. Lil B is considered amongst many to be the first “outsider artist” in hip hop. Brandon ignores the standard format and traditional subject matters of hip hop. As an unconventional artist he did not follow the standard rules of being someone who would deemed a talented rapper, becoming an apparatus of shocking creativity. His music can be considered asinine but it is enjoyable to listen to and offers a sense of liberation as he defies the standards of rap and also in some cases the standards of society. As early as the age of 18, Brandon had started to create freestyles consisting of slurred stream of consciousness style of rapping accompanied with horrible lyrics and a catchy beat that would later become his signature based freestyles. These based freestyles would often be named after a popular celebrity, such as “I’m Miley Cyrus” and “Ellen DeGeneres”. Using already relevant celebrities, Brandon could introduce his music to a wide variety of audiences. These songs included a cooking dance, which is satirical of the glorification of crack and cocaine in hip hop music, and ignorant lyrics permeated with plenty of pop culture references. None of this which had been ever done, was an extremely original idea that received a grand amount of attention and created hype that Lil B would continue to feed off of. Brandon McCartney has titled a recent mixtape “I’m Gay” which is a play on of the word and actually means that he is a happy and positive human being enjoying life while also promoting self-confidence among people of the homosexual community. In a CNN interview with Gavin Godfrey, Lil B explains the harsh reactions he received, “ Mainly, a lot of them are on Twitter, saying that they're going to kill me for being gay, and they're going to kill me for being homosexual even though I'm not homosexual . I did this with the pure intention in my heart to help people, and I didn't do this for promotional reasons.” Homosexuality, is not a commodity in the hip hop scene and is often frowned upon. Although he says the titling of his mixtape was not for promotional reasons, he most likely used it as a marketing technique to add shock value to his music. His mixtape most certainly was a culture shock to the hip-hop community with all the slander and backlash. As Anthony D'Alessandro stated in his LA Weekly article, “The Long Tail of Lil B: Why The Based God is a Genius”, “The fact that we ask these questions at all means that Lil B is doing something right. He is drawing people in, forcing them to become immigrants, tourists, and eventually permanent residents of the Based World. And at the same time you're judging and trying to under