What a time to be alive!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKD2sEX3TO8
Hey do you remember this insta-legendary picture? If you're lame, that's Metro Boomin and Lil B in the studio together. If you're even more lame, Metro Boomin is one of the hottest producers in hip hop today, the one who, more than anyone else, defined Young Thug's breakout sound, and then brought it to the pinnacle of mainstream with his work on the Future/Drake WATTBA. If you're so lame that I need to explain who Lil B is to you, you should probably just leave this blog. Well, I guess it is a bit forgivable, since it's been over a year since Ultimate Bitch, the last solo Lil B mixtape. Thugged Out Pissed Off has been in the works ever since, and Metro's involvement with it on top of the long list of confirmed singles (all of them bangers) is pushing it towards the upper echelon of his potential.
The first result of this sure-fire collaboration is... well, honestly, probably the most underwhelming thing it could be: "just" Lil B going ham on the Jumpman instrumental. To be fair, this probably isn't anything actually to do with them being in the studio together, besides maybe Metro passing him the instrumental. The beat is super sick, it exists in this amazing space of both aggressiveness and vaporousness, where it feels like something is pushing very hard from all directions from a deep underwater bubble. Y'know, that aesthetic. I feel like this is the optimal club-focused beat right now, the sort of disorientation/bliss we see from guys like The Weeknd or Future... Basically Metro has created this emotional/sonic space, and is still the master of it.
Then we get LIL B doing CLASSIC LIL B THINGS, and what more could you possibly want? The way he changes the repeated "Jumpman" from the original into a repeated "Based God" is a perfect microcosm of his general relationship with the larger hip hop environment... like, he works with an understanding of the appeal of the original, but he transforms it into something functionally equivalent but uniquely his own. And it's a sort of reductive transformation, like... the term "Based God" already signifies so many things, but now it's somehow equivalent to the commercial chant for Jordans too? (hey, where's the Lil B shoes?). You get a sense from power in this reductive ability, like, his Based Universe has always had entities that encompass even the most cutting edge of modern hip hop.
I dunno if that makes any sense, but regardless, this power enables him to say some of the absolute craziest lyrics and I love absolutely all of them. Like check these out:
"Tell her get nasty, bitch illumi-nasty" - secrets within!
"I think I'm Earl Sweatshirt or I think I'm Tyler" and then he shouts "Odd Future!" which puts this song in this strange impossible time, because you really do feel like this is somehow cutting edge
"Fucking bitches mouths, I don't get tired" hahaha
"I still selling Jerrys bitch I want some money" what is a Jerry? what the hell does this mean?
"You never seen Jerry cause you niggas snitch" ...oh.
"I got that dirty dick like Charlie Sheen" - this one is all in the delivery
"Fuck Jim Crow" like the thankfully long-dead racist laws from the U.S. south? Yeah, fuck them!
"All I smoke is purple, I don't do the cooking" a good response to crack-based trap music
Things like that. Only Lil B. A world unto himself. Thugged Out Pissed Off when????
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