He spoke for eighty minutes, starting many sentences and finishing few of them. He wore a tennis-ball-green T-shirt, a quilted scarf, a jewelled bindi, and a gold grill. He’s sort of the vanguard of hip-hop, in that he’s parodying what’s out there.”Ī red curtain parted and Lil B appeared, smiling and pumping his fist triumphantly. “If I could interject,” said Mitchell Wang, a freshman in a Polo pullover, “I think you can’t view him as a traditional artist. “When you’re feeling reckless, you just repeat the things he says, whether it’s true or not.” (Girlfriend-swapping is indeed one of Lil B’s recurring themes, albeit one that he seems to indulge only within the aspirational world of his music.) “There’s no one else like him,” Kochanski said. I asked him why he wrote messages to the Based God. In real life, he was sitting in the fifth row, unaccompanied. 4th row #nyu #lecture.” The tweeter turned out to be Tyler Kochanski, a sophomore from Bloomfield, New Jersey. Over his shoulder, I saw him tweet a message to Lil B: you can fuck my bitch, she even said so herself. hoodie, sat in the seat in front of mine, typing on his phone. Lil B is hardly the first rapper to claim status as a deity, but he did coin “based” (or “#based”), an adjective he defines vaguely, and which uses to describe his music, his lifestyle, and himself.Ī white kid with a wispy goatee, wearing a purple N.Y.U. Anxious for Lil B to appear, the crowd chanted one of his stage names, Based God. One student wore a chef’s hat, an allusion to Lil B’s “cooking music,” which is itself a satire of rap’s lionization of cocaine dealers. “It’s gonna be a real progressive talk,” Lil B presaged, “and when everybody leaves, their lives will be changed.” The mood at the auditorium on Wednesday night was Obama-in-2008 exultant. Last month, N.Y.U.’s student-run program board announced an unscripted lecture by Lil B, to take place on April 11th. It went like this: “I’m Ryan Duffy / I’m Ryan Duffy.” By the end of the interview, Lil B had come up with a new song. In a 2011 video interview, the Vice reporter Ryan Duffy asked, with regard to this phylum of Lil B’s music, “What the fuck is that about?” “It’s some celebrities that I just think are just funny,” Lil B responded. One of his songs is called “I’m Miley Cyrus,” and it goes like this: “I’m Miley Cyrus / I’m Miley Cyrus / Cyrus / Cyrus / I’m Miley Cyrus.” Another song, called “Mel Gibson,” goes like this: “I look like Mel Gibson / I’m Mel Gibson… Oh my god, I’m Mel Gibson.” He has a song called “Ellen DeGeneres,” which goes like this: “Ellen DeGeneres / Ellen DeGeneres / Ellen DeGeneres / Ellen DeGeneres.” There is one called “Justin Bieber,” one called “Paris Hilton,” one called “Bill Clinton,” and one called “Dr.