Lil B: "I'm Miley Cyrus"

In his review of MF Based (2010) and Rain in England (2010), Clay called out Lil B’s worthless blank space, his graceless weirdness, and how such things make B’s Internet-approved ascendancy seem like a joke at the expense of not just B himself, but pretty much all hip-hop. Problems to be addressed, of course, but I’d tend to blame a lot of it on the staggering amount of crap this guy’s put out in a short amount of time. I also think the erstwhile leader of the Pack—one of the better one-hit wonders of the past few years (”Vans” ought to be played at every party, everywhere)—possesses a kind of generosity of spirit that’s only been growing, tipping the ratio of Good Songs to Bad Songs largely in his favor.

The Red Flame mixtape is the first realization of this, and the fact that B keeps returning to the title is a sign that he’s realized it too. Though the plaintive, Andrea Bocelli-sampling “New York Subway” ranks with the best love songs to a city already full of them, and “Based Niggas” coheres his spacey non-sequiturs into a series of unforgettable punchlines (”I got AK’s, bitch I’m Phil Collins / Got shotguns, bitch I’m George Clooney / Only nigga in the hood with a pink Uzi”), it’s “I’m Miley Cyrus” that epitomizes his unique appeal. Which: he’s a wimp who lacks any conventional talent, but he owns that persona so hard, on mixtape after mixtape, that he’s somehow turned it into an asset.

Most improbably, it’s starting to look like he’s turning that persona into a viable bid for becoming a legitimate rapper, one in the mold of his idols. His shallow musings on being “based” and love of random celebrity names are crystallized in the punchy “Cyrus,” whose titular phrase sums up Lil B’s M.O. almost as much as “Hard In Da Paint” does for Waka Flocka Flame. Over a stuttering keyboard, B weaves an intoxicating web of surreal associations (”Left hand Cyrus / Right hand Cyrus,”), basic inquiry (”Where’s Trace Cyrus?”), and easily intuited rap-ese (most inescapably his use of “swag” like “stop” in a telegram). He’s not really talking about anything, and the vocals are, in typical B fashion, terribly recorded on a built-in computer mic or something. But gone are his early mixtapes’ awkward pauses and absolute lack of focus.

Miley represents something to him, maybe everything; lines like “Party in the USA / Ohmigod!” are pitched enigmatically between sincerity and riffing. It’s ridiculous, it’s a metaphor, it sounds good over a pared-down dubstep sample: whatever. He still might not have an interesting word to say about the empty self-affirmation he traffics in half the time, but when he does land a punch, it’s finally starting to smart.