BasedWorld Records
His most popular and infamous album was titled I’m Gay (though he’s not) so genre-bending seems a logical next step for rapper Lil B a.k.a. The BasedGod. Listening to his new classical album feels a bit like wading into a pool that turns into an ocean: not only is it far longer than you might expect (at roughly 100 minutes it outlasts most movies) it’s also completely wordless sonically dense and reaches levels of obsessive repetition way past anything by Philip Glass. Comparing it to Glass or any other classical music may be beside the point. You suspect Lil B took a few general attributes that define classical like a kid rummaging through his parents’ closet and turned them into something entirely his own. He seems more concerned with sculpting sound — through cascading motives accreting textures premonitions of grooves that never quite develop — than with any formal or harmonic underpinnings. Lil B perhaps conceived Choices and Flowers as a vacation from any binding structures or conventions a chance to float weightless — or perhaps his idea was to shatter every notion of how a modern young rapper’s work might sound? He’s done that.
