How I Became a Fan of Lil B + "Hunchback of Basedgod" Review

something something easy I could say
with this album I could really easily say to you Oh on this album The Hunchback project little B returns to what made his music great in the first place much like my idea of what made his music great it is probably completely different from yours he's really returning to that anguished earnest tone that came through you know not consistently that came through in from time to time in fits and starts that came through on those earlier albums you know including you know the gods father mixtape and what am i hearing from little B during that period of my life a lot of songs where he's struggling to give voice to you know disappointments in his own life a lot of sorrow a lot of agony you have that sense of progression of yearning and then you have the recrimination to look back on his own life it's especially dark when he's reflecting on who his friends are how he's been surrounded by people who aren't really his friends it's almost made more more effective and more evocative because little B is not a natural poet a lot of time what you hear is his struggle to get that across in words and his struggle to get that across in music it's not effortless [Music] that sense of the struggle that sense of the soro you know it comes across in you know like 100 songs on this guy's record and I recognize you listen this video now you may have never heard that side little beat you may have only heard this guy doing a novelty dance the cooking dance or making fun of Ellen DeGeneres doing these really weird tracks you may not realize that there really is something people connect to on an emotional level the you know little B is a lot more meaningful to the lives of a lot of his fans than like the Beatles White Album is the stereotypical people who grew up in the 1960s this video is partly just a review of the new album came out from little B September 2019 The Hunchback project it's partly also a set of reflections on how I became a fan of little B Y I'm a fan of little B because I realized this video will partly be seen by people people who are already fans a little bead as music to some extent people who are maybe wondering is this new album worth downloading is it one of his best albums is one of his worst just where is it stay on the spectrum like people already fans were interested in hearing critical opinion of the album but I know this video is also going to be seen by people who just have no idea why anyone would be a fan of little D in his music and I am I'm a fan of this guy's work with zero irony you know and every so often I see questions on the internet people just asking like look I understand they're kind of all these jokes surrounding this guy like I understand you know there are these kind of memes on the internet people just kind of repeat these catchphrases but is anybody out there like really a fan of little penis music does anyone like connect with this authentically or is it just one of these things in the internet where people keep repeating the joke again and again and it's not funny anymore and you know if you also are like on ironically a little B fan you must realize that the majority of people who have encountered his music did so by seeing like a viral video in which he's making fun of Ellen DeGeneres and just repeating the word swag again in the can with like intentionally no rhythm like sort of some of the early work that was like a parody on celebrity culture and a kind of self-hating reaction to celebrity culture in Los Angeles and his own place and his own experience in Los Angeles you know and it wasn't just Ellen DeGeneres he made a whole series of songs like that you realize I mean maybe even if you are a fan yourself the first time you encounter blue bead and this subculture of surrounding them on the internet kind of raising one eyebrow and what then even a step beyond that if you're someone who once gave this guy a chance and downloaded his albums you know I remember myself he put out a track that you know the old heads could really appreciate he put on a track called my arms of the Brooklyn Bridge people try to hate the second guess what I'm doing man and then the dough line let's just think you Hogan's me and even the people who really kind of hated him on WorldStarHipHop at the time this is years ago a lot of people like okay all right we can recognize this this is like conventional hip-hop whether old school or new school we can recognize you know the craft is here you know there's a certain kind of sentiment a substance here where people set up and said okay now we're willing to listen but a lot of those same people would then get frustrated because he might put out like 50 tracks like a whole pile of music several projects or whatever that then didn't have that quality or that direction where he was taking things in a totally different artistic direction me away oh yeah so another one of the problems I mean just for the fandom for little B I mean someone who jumped on at the gods father mixtape and we're expecting him to move consistently in that direction well he didn't he's a creative artist who really moves in a lot of different directions at the same time and a lot of different directions over the same period of five years most [ __ ] funny let pieces not looking down on like children what happened so like something something easy I could say with this album I could really easily say to you Oh on this album The Hunchback project little B returns to what made his music great in the first place much like my idea of what made his music great it is probably completely different from yours the guy's body of work there are so many tracks in the stack like you know even within some of those albums you and I may not be thinking of the same songs on the gods father mixtape but money eat was killing if you think about it everybody's willing to get a million mother [ __ ] pay the price over who's made sugar you and I may not be thinking of the same songs over a 10-year period we're intentionally or unintentionally we're picking and choosing our version of what it is we think little B ought to be what direction we think his music ought to go in in future and what made it great in the past now like obviously you could say that's true of a lot of mainstream artists you could say that's true of the Beatles or a Bob Dylan like two different Bob Dylan fans have different periods they appreciate from God Bob Dylan's music it's way more extreme with little be the the diversity that exists within his work and just how many thousands of songs you're talking about and then like what I want to come back to here even the question of how did you as a fan if you're on I wanna clea fan this guy's work how did you first discover it and make some kind of emotional connection with it because I think it is I think it is really a question of whether or not you found something in that bottle of body of work that really means something you really moves you emotionally so again I'm saying this with zero irony I was one of those guys who gave little be a second chance back when the my arms of the Brooklyn Bridge came out so you put up this track Brooklyn Bridge and it's like okay you know so this is hip hop as I know what this is rap news because I know what I'm I'm willing to listen and I googled around the internet at that time I found a bunch of blogs talking but little B but most of them were abandoned but they kind of already started up and shut down and a lot of those blogs were saying look you know this is an artist who puts out hundreds of songs and then for you as a listener you got a sift through them and find what it is you think it's worth listening to but that's that's the those the rules this guy plays by it's not like the old days of people paying $20 and getting eight songs on a disc music is free and there's a lot of it and some of them are finished songs and some of them are just like sketches incomplete ideas set down on paper in this new project the hunchback project it falls into three neat categories there were fifty tracks on the album 55 zero but you basically have a conventional album at the start with some concept tracks and lyrical tracks then there's a middle section of the of the desk where everyone say there's a middle section which is like a completely separate acoustic album it's saw a collection of tracks with no with no lyrics instrumentals you know [Music] some of those are very impressive and very interesting some of them a wonderful it'll be will in future at lyrics to them or a wonder if he's putting them out there to invite other people other aspiring rappers to rap over the tracks some of them stand up fine with no lyrics add to them but that part may or may not interest you and then there's a closing section of the album that are free styles and there's a big difference between the free styles and the more composed for a section yellow so you know like I don't think that's nothing to criticize as I say in an era when music is free it's not even costing five cents to download it take it or leave it if I think many people would prefer to have a short tightly organized album where every track means something to them but those are not the rules little B plays by as a creative artist so look as I say at that stage way back when arms of the Brooklyn Bridge came out and I googled around a little bit I already got the point that you know this was an artist who put out songs in bulk and then you as the listener we're gonna edit that playlist you were gonna decide for yourself what stayed on your hard drive and what didn't and again I just point out if this new album The Hunchback project if it has five songs that means something to you that makes it a great album you know and if only five songs at a 50 stay in your hard drive that's not a loss for a little B and it's not a loss for you as a listener that makes it a great out that's really worth really worth downloading anyway the next big turning point for me is when my wife got pregnant so my wife knife now split up many many years ago so ex-wife now it's together with my wife she was pregnant and during the pregnancy I made the decision okay look I'm gonna delete all the rap music off my harddrive cuz you know I'm gonna have a new baby crawling around I don't want to be listening to music that consists of you know a lot of curse words and a lot of you know threats and boasting and stuff okay well this can be a new period in my life whether it lasts 10 years or 50 years or whatever I'm now gonna have a period of my life where I'm not listening to rap music at all cuz I've got new new baby coming in this world so my ex-wife and I ended up in the hospital she gave birth to the kid and when you go to the hospital you don't know how long you're gonna be there for you know the birth you know you could just begin in you're out overnight or in a few hours and we were there for like a week or more forget felt like a long time but I think we were there for like a week and you know we're vegan so I had to go out and buy food and bring in the food for her it was this really tense situation because almost all of the doctors and nurses just hated us there were two nurses who were really nice to us that really remember and one of them she gave us like a card at the end so we had her name and we actually tried to send her a present in the mail send her a gift like a thank-you gift because we did ever names we looked at her name and got an address I mean I really appreciate the two people on staff who did not treat us like garbage but man the level of hatred and hostility we got from the doctors and nurses at that hospital was unbelievable and a lot of that hostility not all of it but a lot of it was because from their perspective at this hospital in the South of France they've regarded us as North African black I know in that cultural context in the South of France where they do have a lot of black people from North Africa who like in New York City would be considered white like they really don't have African features the racism and the kind of colonial attitudes they're really intense and really narrow and some of the doctors and nurses who were the meanest does who were the cruelest us they were themselves of North African ancestry maybe not black but they were like some kind of Arab from North Africa some kind of Arabic person and like it goes a little bit deeper than just racism their feeling looking at us was that they as this French medical doctor they grew up connected in North Africa connected to the Maghreb but that they had fully assimilated they had like adopted French civilization they were now highly educated elite members of French society and like here me and my ex-wife they were looking down at us as like unassimilated new immigrants from North Africa - yeah if you think this is my imagination like on two different occasions they literally directly said to us they refer to us as Africa in one of them it was because they were insisting that we get a blood test done for the baby a special blood test to check if she had genetic disorders that your people have in Africa all right so it's not mentioning [ __ ] that's it's not the only reason they were they were so awful to us but unbelievably I was put in this situation where you know how it's I know what sounds ridiculous I was actually being despised for being a black African in the South of France and a lot of the people despising me they themselves were to some extent North Africa you know I bought bought a pair of speakers and one of the reasons why at that time I downloaded a bunch of the albums from little B was that I knew in the back of my mind was like oh yeah that was kind of always something I had in my mind of the things to do list I knew I'd never been through this guys back catalogue of albums and sifted through you know the hundreds of tracks and decided which ones I like to look I knew that was something to do and I knew that the music was available for free like I wasn't going to in that hospital start start downloading wu-tang or something and like I say my hard drive you know my hard drive was empty that was that was such a dark such an emotionally exhausting period of my life you know having a new baby it should be the happiest period of life happiest few days your life instead it was the most tragic it was the most terrible and the conflict at that hospital it meant it was real I've mentioned this before on YouTube but at one point I literally had to stop a nurse from assaulting my wife now my ex-wife my ex-wife was lying on the bed she was bedridden it was just ridiculous and you know when I when I physically I just like went but like you know you you really doing this I remember she when she slammed that door on the way out afterwards - it was one of those you know one of those hospital safety tours anyone mad I mean it was so tense and so real and I was so listen to little B I was going through these tracks and you know when I'd go into the city to pick up vegan food from Acts wife we're vegan and none of the none of the food nonspells vegan and walking down the street whether or not I was listening to little B at that minute you know it was listening through a lot of that stuff you know in and out of the hospital then it's such a dark cloud or M it's such a dark energy this is a town in the South of France where they had those narrow streets cobblestone streets and there were pimps and drug dealers and prostitutes on those streets not not a ton not like an army but you know there were homeless people and drug dealers Knossos I don't even think anything more to Rob anybody but there were people out and I was absolutely in that moment of like you know I wish I wish you would I wish you tried it even even if I've got to spend the night in prison or something because somebody jumps me on the street man I'd be such oh I'd be so happy to spend a night in prison now instead of going back to that Hospital you know so what you scare foe you think about me pause [ __ ] no reaction he's [Music] so me I know that right through with the month like a Mac and you know the the other people on the street you know they they picked up on it I can remember there were like you know drug dealers in the street who looked at me and they were looking you know good do you appreciate life not a [ __ ] like that ad says me so [ __ ] believes it's not it's not like a big road it's not like a big Street in Detroit or something these are these are little narrow streets in old city so the France and yeah I didn't say a word to anybody I didn't I didn't threaten anybody but they were just picking up on that you know that rather be dead than alive I wish you would vibe during a period of my life is unbelievably unbelievably emotionally you know just heart-rending why are you in my house I mean I thought she was my friend lot of [ __ ] and what am i hearing from little B during that period of my life a lot of songs where he's struggling to give voice to you know disappointments in his own life a lot of sorrow a lot of agony a lot of you know I mean a lot of his tracks even even musically you have that sense of progression of yearning and then you have the recrimination the look back on his own life it's especially dark when he's reflecting on who his friends are how he's been surrounded by people who aren't really his friends you know people who act like they're his friends they're really trying to hold him back they're ruining his life people he thought he that he thought were his friends you know aren't really that for him he's got a lot of tracks talking about being bullied in high school but I never was that what being bullied was not my problem I was not one of the victims of bullying but you get this you know this sorrow and this anguish coming across the track and it's almost made more more effective and more evocative because little B is not a natural poet a lot of time what you hear is his struggle to get that across in words and his struggle to get that across in music it's not effortless that sense of the struggle that sense of the sorrow you know it comes across in you know like 100 songs on this guy's record and I recognize you listen to this video now you may have never heard that side little B you may have only heard this guy doing a novelty dance the cooking dance or making fun of Ellen DeGeneres so doing these really weird tracks you may not realize that there really is something people connect to on an emotional level that you know little B is a lot more meaningful to the lives of a lot of his fans than like the Beatles White Album is the stereotypical B grew up in the 1960s you know there is something there that people care about and you know I'd say it's it's just as much about the struggle of the messenger as is about the message and that's part of what makes this new album now the Hunchback project an interesting turning point in little B's own career the same musical style that we saw in the black canon project in terms of his keyboarding he's now really pressed further with that that's really taken off if anything he's now demonstrating that what he was interested in musically in raindrops in London rain in London I think that out like starting at the very earliest of those those instrumental projects through to the black can project that he now has finally mastered that that that's become easy for him something he struggled to get to grips with on one album after another and let's not forget this guy who started off by wrapping over beats other people send him on MySpace you know now he's really able to do with the keyboard everything he wanted to do he's completely shed the gangster persona here I don't think there's a single track on this album that's gangster you know which is a great thing it's a beautiful thing I think it's like he's reached a point in his career where there's enough substance form to deal with emotionally that he doesn't need to put on the put on the persona put on the makeup put on the put on the wig of the street gangster anymore lyric after lyric in this album is him reflecting on now being 30 years old the reason why it's called the hunchback project is that he's talking about being old feeling the pain in his back and you know travelling to take on a new perspective on life lyrically the beauty of this is he's really returning to that anguished earnest tone that came through you know not consistently that came through in from time to time in fits and starts that came through on those earlier albums you know including you know the gods father mixtape a project that for many of us was when we first started taking a little bit seriously and watching where it was gonna go with this The Hunchback project it is possibly the single greatest album the single greatest project little bee has ever put out possibly now he's got a huge catalog he's got a lot of competition but the fact that that debate could happen the fact that this could be for you subjectively the best projects ever put out that really makes it worth downloading that really makes it worth talk [Music]