Lil B (US rapper, a.k.a. “The BasedGod”)

Brandon Christopher McCartney (born August 17, 1989), known professionally as Lil B and Lil B the BasedGod, is an American rapper and record producer. He began his career as a member of the Berkeley, California-based hip hop group the Pack in 2005, who signed with Too Short's Up All Nite Records, an imprint of Jive Records the following year. The group became best known for their hit song "Vans", their sole entry on the Billboard Hot 100, later releasing two studio albums before disbanding in 2010. McCartney's extensive use of social media in his solo career and online persona has yielded a cult following. His work spans several genres, including comedy hip-hop, new age, jazz, indie rock and choral music. He calls his alter ego the BasedGod, and is credited with having coined the slang term "based", which originally denoted a lifestyle of positivity, impudence or boldness. By the late 2010s, the phrase had been used to describe stances or actions that negate political correctness; by the 2020s, the term had entered the mainstream and regained a neutral connotation. Lil B has been credited as "the godfather of internet rap", a pioneer of the cloud rap subgenre, as well as one of the "most influential rappers" of the 2010s, influencing artists such as Kendrick Lamar, Playboi Carti, Young Thug, Lil Yachty, Chief Keef, Chance the Rapper, Yung Lean, Earl Sweatshirt, Black Kray, Bladee, Xaviersobased, and Tyler, the Creator, as well as actor Timothée Chalamet. Brandon Christopher McCartney was born on August 17, 1989, in Berkeley, California, and attended high school at Albany High in Albany. He adopted the name Lil B, and began rapping at age 15 with San Francisco Bay Area based hip hop group The Pack. After two locally successful mixtapes, at the peak of the Bay Area's hyphy movement, the group's song "Vans" became a surprise hit. The song was ranked as the fifth best of 2006 by Rolling Stone magazine. The strength of "Vans" led the group to release the Skateboards 2 Scrapers EP, featuring a "Vans" remix with Bay Area rappers Too $hort and Mistah F.A.B. In 2007, McCartney and The Pack released their first album, Based Boys. On September 24, 2009, McCartney released his first digital album, I'm Thraxx, via independent label Permanent Marks. On December 22, 2009, McCartney released his second digital album, 6 Kiss, to critical reception. On March 25, 2010, McCartney released his debut mixtape Dior Paint. On April 3, 2010, McCartney officially signed to fellow artist Soulja Boy's label SODMG Entertainment. On May 7, 2010, McCartney released a mixtape entitled Base World Pt. 1. On July 5, 2010, McCartney released a collaboration mixtape with Soulja Boy entitled Pretty Boy Millionaires. McCartney had recorded over 1,500 tracks as of July 2010, including hits "Like A Martian", "Wonton Soup", "Pretty Bitch", "I'm God", all of which were released for free. On September 21, 2010, McCartney released his debut studio album, Rain in England, through Weird Forest Records; it was described by The Guardian as "a beatless, Beat poetry-style set where McCartney, voice a-quiver with earnestness, ponders love, beauty and all the bad things in the world over naïf new-age synth washes". On December 29, 2010, it was announced and confirmed that McCartney signed an album deal with Amalgam Digital. On July 10, 2011, McCartney released the EP Paint, through his label BasedWorld Records. On January 18, 2011, McCartney released his fourth digital album entitled Angels Exodus, through Amalgam Digital. On April 14, 2011, McCartney announced that his next album would be entitled I'm Gay, which caused a degree of controversy. On June 29, 2011, McCartney released his fifth digital album, I'm Gay (I'm Happy), through Amalgam Digital; the album entered the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart at number 56 and the Heatseekers Albums chart at number 20 for the week of July 16, 2011. On May 17, 2012, McCartney released his first instrumental album, Choices and Flowers, under the alias "The Basedgod". On September 16, 2012, McCartney released a rock single entitled "California Boy". On December 30, 2012, McCartney released his second instrumental album entitled Tears 4 God, also under the alias "The Basedgod". On December 24, 2013, McCartney released the mixtape 05 Fuck Em, which contained 101 songs. On June 1, 2014, McCartney released a mixtape entitled Hoop Life, which would be known for containing a track entitled "F*ck KD" that called out NBA player Kevin Durant. On October 14, 2014, McCartney released the Ultimate Bitch mixtape, featuring the song "No Black Person Is Ugly." On July 19, 2015, McCartney and Chance the Rapper announced that they had recorded a collaborative mixtape. It was released as Free (Based Freestyles Mixtape) on August 5. Later that year, on December 30, McCartney released the 63-track mixtape Thugged Out Pissed Off. In 2017, McCartney was featured on Terror Jr's remix of their song "Come First". On August 17, 2017, McCartney released Black Ken, describing it as his "first official mixtape." The mixtape reached number 24 on the Top Heatseekers chart and number 44 on the Independent Albums chart for the week of September 2, 2017. In June 2022, McCartney released Frozen and The Frozen Tape. In August, he released Thraxxx Kiss, a collaboration with producer Keyboard Kid. McCartney released Afrikantis, a jazz album, on December 22, 2022. McCartney and music critics refer to his rapping style as "based", a word that McCartney also uses to describe a positive, bold lifestyle. "Based" is a reclaimed word, as described by McCartney in Complex: Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive. When I was younger, based was a negative term that meant like dopehead, or basehead. People used to make fun of me. They was like, "You're based." They'd use it as a negative. And what I did was turn that negative into a positive. I started embracing it like, "Yeah, I'm based." I made it mine. I embedded it in my head. Based is positive. Slate columnist Jonah Weiner labeled him as one of a "growing number of weird-o emcees", calling him a "brilliantly warped, post-Lil Wayne deconstructionist from the Bay Area". Musical critic Willy Staley described McCartney's work as "variegated", because it ranges from critical parodies of the hip-hop genre to "half new age, half spoken word". He further notes that McCartney draws from a large variety of genres, especially those not commonly used by other rappers. In an interview with Staley, McCartney agrees with this analysis, saying, "I can do 'Swag OD' but then my favorite musical artist right now could be Antony and the Johnsons. That's the difference between me and these other rappers, and other musical artists in general." Takin' Over by Imposing the Positive! is a book written by McCartney and published through Kele Publishing in 2009. The book is a collection of and written in the form of e-mails and text messages, and is written in such a way that the author is e-mailing the reader. Subjects include positivity, optimism, and living what he calls a "Based Lifestyle". The book was passed out in an unscripted NYU lecture in March 2012. On March 30, 2013, McCartney announced that he was in the process of writing his second book. McCartney has given motivational lectures at several colleges, including MIT and Carnegie Mellon University. They are generally focused around his personal experience in life and current events. On May 28, 2015, the rapper gave a lecture at UCLA, where he touched on subjects like money, the media, technology, space, awareness, and love. McCartney launched the "Basedmoji" app on January 16, 2015. On January 17, 2015, McCartney released "vegEMOJI", in cooperation with vegan company "Follow Your Heart". Despite the fact that McCartney is not a vegan, he has stated that he is cutting down on his consumption of processed foods, and that he