Is Lil B Still Your God? VIBE Decodes The Based Misfit's Odd Scripture (Pg. 2)

Really, weird is not so weird when you have bizarros like Lady Gaga, Nicki Minaj and Ke$ha making pop music a spectacle. A cult of nonsense is basically the foundation for Lil B’s e-roots “Based” movement whose three codes of law seem to revolve around peace, happiness and fucking your bitch. Jumping in and out of his two alter caricatures—Lil B (an insatiable lewdist who sounds like a scary drunk) and Based God (an optimist who sounds like a sedated monk)—the schismatic MC has been cranking out the type of online prolificacy that could bring Soulja Boy’s hard drive to climax (see: the 676-track mixtape, Free Music: The Complete MySpace Collection). In the past year, he’s proclaimed himself in a very Rick Ross-ian way to be Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber and Ron Artest in songs that sometimes feature him simply chanting the fact that he is said person (i.e., “Miley! Cyrus!” x 20).

With unedited ADD rhymes ranging from “pretty bitch” swag to transcendentalism to wonton soup, Brandon Christopher McCartney believes life is best experienced—and expressed—without thought. “I do whatever the beat tells me. I’m not trying to impress anybody,” says B, whose ensemble today includes gravity challenged jeans, an American Apparel jacket and impressively ravaged Vans. “I’ve been the center of attention so much, coming through in a pink shirt or orange tank top and muthafuckas looking at me weird and giving me the envious eye. I got used to it. I feed off it now.”

As an only child, Lil B had way too much unsupervised time on his hands. Mama Based spent most of her hours on the road as a bus driver, while Papa Based went the estranged route leaving B to become a pot-selling weed head who loved to pull his high school fire alarm every other day, pedal his two-wheeler to local businesses (including a jewelry store and reptile vivarium—he was really into science) and spend every minute in-between getting his rap skills right. “I was on some murder rap, even though I was a kid,” says B. “It was what I was around.”

→ To find out why Lil B's okay with being mistaken for gay, why he insists on calling himself a pretty bitch and if he's fucked your bitch yet cop VIBE's April/May 2011 International Issue