Brandon McCartney, the 22-year-old Berkeley native better known as the gold-grilled rapper Lil B "THE BASEDGOD", will be appearing at New York University's Kimmel Center on April 11, the university announced last week.
But the performer SPIN Magazine calls "the busiest man in hip-hop" won't be giving a concert. Lil B, who chose music over college after graduating in 2005 from Albany High School, will be lecturing.
“I went to 20 years of college and I’m glad I [can] help the Earth," he asserts on his ambient rap album Rain In England, released when he was 20.
"I got a master's in life, a bachelor's in love. I got a bachelor's in life, a bachelor's in peace."
The N.Y.U. talk sold out ten minutes after being announced on Twitter.
"I specialize in the progression of humans," Lil B later told Fuse. "It's gonna be a real progressive talk, and when everybody leaves, their lives will be changed."
The event won't be the first time Lil B's voice has sounded in the ivory tower. At UC Berkeley last year, professor and NPR commentator Geoffrey Nunberg incorporated "The Age of Information" into his History of Information lecture, screening Lil B's self-directed video and drawing out its arguments about technology and progress.
Lil B was a teenage protégé of Oakland rapper Too $hort, whom the 15-year-old met while serving a sentence in the Juvenile Justice Center of Alameda County.
Lil B first drew national attention as part of the hip-hop foursome The Pack, whose 2006 sneaker hit, "Vans", was released on Too $hort's label, Up All Nite Records.
Three years later, Lil B came back as a solo artist, writing his own self-help book at nineteen, Takin' Over by Imposing the Positive, and dropping his first full-length album, 6Kiss, under his new superhuman moniker, Lil B "THE BASEDGOD".
From the opening tracks of 6Kiss - "B.O.R. (Birth of Rap)" and "I'm God" – through the unstoppable stream of free albums and mixtapes which followed, including last month's God's Father and April Fool's #1 Bitch, Lil B has raised the stakes of hip-hop braggadacio to new - and blasphemous - levels.
"You know I always wanted to be the best. You know I always wanted to be God," he confesses at the start of "I'm God", whose video follows Lil B through a Catholic relics shop.
The shot stops at the altar, where Lil B turns to the camera and the Based God reveals himself.
Yeah is this what you really want, you got me in the flesh now
No, I'm not stressed out, I'm God, I'm the best out ...
Somebody tell the Earth I'm the best now
Somebody tell the ocean I'm the best out
Somebody tell the trees I'm here now
Somebody tell the world I'm Based now
Cal Performances, you've been told! The new rap God even wears Cal colors. Time to bring the Based God to Zellerbach.
