Lil’ B – Angel’s Exodus (2011) [Amalgam] // Grade: B+

Lil B’s catalog reminds me very much of the show Lost — not that B has ever explicitly mentioned polar bears or smoke monsters (though he does share some ideas on time dilation and reverence for eastern religion with the show). Their similarity is in the polarized nature of their fandom — there’s the one subset of fans that dig the visceral aspects and the other set who appreciate the more esoteric attributes. Your mom was way into the Jack/Kate/Sawyer love triangle of Lost because it was perfect serialized popcorn fare. At the same time there was the dude on the forums who wouldn’t shut the fuck up about Lost’s similarities to Watchmen and The Prisoner. Likewise, there’s a contingency of Lil B fans who are way into collecting the early spoken word influenced based freestyles about space, vivariums and time. There’s also another (larger) fanbase who are into the more energetic and fun songs like “What That Mouf Do?,” “Wanton Soup” and “Swag OD,” a song with the lyrics* “swag od, swag od, god damn, swag od, swag od, god damn, mannn, mannn, swag.”

Over the recent months Lil B has been servicing his visceral fanbase heavily, creating increasingly catchy and club ready songs (albeit still weird as fuck) and watching as his popularity increases steadily. Angels Exodus however, is a return to the early based freestyle era, with the album having a recurring theme of motivation and personal achievement. It’s pretty much like when Lost brashly introduced time travel into the show — an open reminder that despite populist leanings and success, you’re dealing with uniquely insular creators who’ve been setting you up for weird shit since day one.

Angels Exodus finds Lil B sans any reference to swag, cooking and only a handful of mentions to Based. Instead B focuses on pushing his positive motivation agenda in a delivery that’s the closest he’s ever come to standard hip hop. He stays on beat a lot more than he usually does and uses more standard rhyme schemes

Haters try to down me, but this is my progression/ When you see me in the studio is when you see perfection/ Achievement connected with the actions/ Last time I fell was when I fell in love with distractions/ Personal development. Springboard excellence. Be anything,  just not… nor the devilish.

Lil B rhymes over a collection of beats on Angels Exodus that flirt with being minimal soundscapes. The instrumentals he’s chosen lay somewhere between his more ethereal traditional hip hop sound (think “Walk The World”) and his ambient/spoken word experiments like “Love Is Strange, My Business” from Rain In England. In some form, the entire album speaks to the idea of motivating the listener to focus on their goals, to think positively or to avoid the pitfalls of life. I know, in print that sounds like the corniest shit ever, or pandering, tacked-on faux duality and depth that’s added on to rap records in an attempts to justify/offset misogyny and calls to violence — Tupac, I’m looking at you. But, remember this is coming from the dude that’s made songs about how awesome wearing girl jeans are and referencing doing psychedelic drugs with Bill O’Reilly and Carlton from The Fresh of Bel Air. So, give dude the benefit of the doubt that it’ll be an interesting listen.

“Vampires” is a first person perspective song about… being a vampire. It’s also a metaphor for fighting the negative impulses we all have in us, which is in line with the subtext of most modern vampire stories. What’s weird is that the music is incredibly happy and expansive, which doesn’t match the narrative at all, but it somehow matches the intent of the song. This is music you could easily sync with slow motion video of a father throwing his happily fat baby up and down while at the park, yet, you instead get Lil B occasionally affecting an Eastern European accent and struggling with his vampiric tendencies. No Lestat. It makes no sense, yet makes total sense, if you think of the music as trying to influence the vampire character B plays, instead of reflecting his emotional state — as if the beat is speaking to him.

“Motivation” is the standout of the album and sort of serves as the thesis statement of the whole album. The song is built around a Clams Casino beat that acknowledges traditional hip hop and yet sounds futuristic and gritty — in a way, it reminds me of what El-P was going for in his Fantastic Damage/Cold Vein era. Over this track, Lil B basically talks about being motivated by adversity and people doubting his ability — this is nothing new, I’m pretty sure my mom touched on similar points during pep talks she gave me in elementary school when kids made fun of my fucked up haircut (not everyone can rock a flat top, we learned that the hard way). She however did not deliver her motivational speech over such a rousing beat and thus, Lil B and Clams’ version wins out. Sorry mom.

Put into context of the rest of Lil B’s output, this album really feels currently autobiographical (which is appropriate considering his reliance on instant media). While his earlier based freestyles often sound like he’s trying to find his place in the world (both in a metaphysical and practical sense) or looking back to his past, this sounds like the work of a dude who has put out a thousand songs in the last year and is most concerned with putting out a thousand more. It’s as if he’s answering the unasked question of “how do you stay focused enough to even make a thousand songs in a year, let alone do all of the ancillary work that’s necessary to get those songs heard?” For Angels Exodus it would seem that Lil B took a page out of Jeezy’s playbook and crafted his own personal version of Thug Motivation. However, in B’s interpolation, it’s much more soothing, emotive and comforting. It’s less your father making you build a brick wall to impart on you the value of hard work, and more a sage yoga instructor asking you to engage in breathing exercise while envisioning yourself succeeding as a tool to accomplishment. Less for thugs and more for the slightly weird everyman, call it Based Motivation.

*I don’t deride “Swag OD” at all, it’s a hot song, but one that it took me a long time to place thematically in the rest of B’s work because of it’s incredible lack of lyrics (Souljah Boy uses something like 75 words in the entire song). After considering Lil B’s Pretty Boy Music phase, Based and his incantatory use of “swag” (shoutout Austin Osman Spare), I realized “Swag OD” is less of a rap song as we know them and more an effective mantra of “swag” as an idea.

Download Lil’ B’s Angels Exodus (Click Here)

- Behold the Destroyer