Lil B’s "Im Gay": Is the Joke On Us?

When Lil B first announced that his new album would be titled “I’m Gay” at Coachella, the news held the promise that when the album eventually dropped, as it did yesterday to little fanfare, it would be just as strange and confusing as the Based God’s many Youtube singles. The most shocking part of the album, however, is just how traditional it really is. It’s hard to say what exactly one should expect from a Lil B album in a conventional format, when so much of his style comes from the flood of single tracks and videos that almost all have the exact same beat. On “I’m Gay” (technically styled “Im Gay (Im Happy)” but we’ll call it what most people certainly will), Lil B cuts out the swags, the whoops, and avoids the call to go into the mind of an Ellen Degeneres or a Bill Clinton. While what follows is hardly a classic of the medium, it isn’t nearly so terrible as what you would expect from someone who once rapped “swag, swag swag swag/brr-ang-dang-dang yo’ girlfriend”.

If this album were coming from any other artist, I can’t imagine it would make much impact. There aren’t any tracks that really jump out at you as classic. The most forgettable tracks center around pretty common themes. On “Neva Stop Me”, he’s trying to figure out how to stay positive in a dark world, and lyrics like “if God is real, why my friend have to die?/Sometimes I gotta ask why,” pretty much underscore the fact that nobody listens to Lil B to settle philosophical debates. Fortunately, Lil B is a solid authority on one subject: himself.

The huge divide between people who love Lil B and people who hate Lil B, as far as I can tell, isn’t about believing he’s a good lyricist or not, but rather believing the songs he is making are intentionally bizarre and attempting to create a new type of music. If that is the case, “I’m Gay” is a success for the Based God: he simultaneously proves that he can write traditional lyrics well (like I said, nothing earth-shaking, but there are some legitimately fun songs on here) and that the haters who think of him as an idiot who stumbled into becoming a Youtube sensation as fairly closed-minded.

On “Trapped in Prison”, Lil B pretty much captures the essence of what his music does, rapping “I dare n****s to say I’m weak/you uncomfortable”. There is a certain homophobia that tinges a lot of the criticism of Lil B, mostly because there’s a tendency within hip-hop itself to address different styles of music in those terms. By making a traditional album, rather than simply accumulating tracks in the style that listeners are accustomed to, it seems like the goal is to convince people that beyond the facade of the controversial album title, there really isn’t anything to be uncomfortable about.

Lil B backs this idea up with a relentless positivity. He is at his best rapping over the ascendant beats on “The Wilderness” (F**k the critics/I’m happy) and “I Seen That Light”, where the production truly mirrors the lyrics. Tracks like “I Hate Myself” fall flat because the revelation at the end of the song is so expected–nobody would believe for a second that Lil B hates himself, having heard any of his music or any of his interviews. This is what makes it so fruitless to hate on him–what did Lil B ever do to anybody except be happy about himself?

That said, is it really good music? I certainly don’t listen to hip-hop for lessons like this, and so the album is probably bound to fall flat because the songs themselves aren’t consistently great. The function of “I’m Gay”, it seems to me, is that it makes it easier to listen to the rest of Lil B’s catalog, where the songs are a lot more fun, without feeling stupid. The joke is on us, Lil B isn’t actually that bad. Unfortunately, he’s not that good, either. Thank you Based God?