Wednesday night was rumored to be on social networking, as near as anyone could tell.
It’s never clear with Lil B just what he’s going to say or do. And in keeping with his carefully crafted persona of inscrutability and mystery, he left the unscripted night open.
Reading what’s been written about the NYU talk, it doesn't seem like a lecture on social networking took place. But whatever it was that actually happened Wednesday night, fans seemed to feel it lived up to the hype.
Pitchfork wrote about the event: "It felt like something positive and rare and totally bizarre was happening."
And after weeks leading up to the talk, with Lil B’s voracious stream of Tweets, and a new mixed tape, (The Basedprint 2), “the rapper took the podium…[and] “did not disappoint.”
Pitchfork then gave us some highlights of the speech:
- "When I was younger, I didn't even know how to walk. I was so self-conscious."
- "I'm out here trying to get my Mitt Romney on."
- "Let's stop fracking. Who knows about hydraulic fracking?”
- “Until further notice, I'm paying taxes and I'm loving it.”
And then of course there was the obligatory talk on insects, something Lil B loves to tweet about: “I was having these big ant problems in my house. As I was studying these ant colonies. It's like man, they have their own communities too. I'm there with them."
Here's Rolling Stone’s take on what happened: “With the exception [...] of love, it is impossible to pin down any main theme of the night.
Rolling Stone said: The unscripted lecture…rambled on… Although it was at times seemingly senseless, Lil B would sporadically touch on something thoughtful, causing some to subvert their previously confident assertions of his lunacy.
But Lil B did, according to Rolling Stone, clarified his position on what it means to be based. “Based means that you have somebody to trust. [...]"I am not the Based God. The Based God is better than me."
So is Lil B all hype or is there a message in the madness?
