Jesse Untract-Oakner

Lil B at the New Museum.

Lil B
The New Museum
Thursday, April 12

Better than: Quietly contemplating a painting.

1. In the small downstairs theater of the New Museum, a projector's light beams onto Lil B, building his shadow. A camera drifts with him from behind, following him in a light trails. It brings the otherwise undecorated space into a soft, bluish focus, B floating coolly through it. There's little distance between B and the crowd, just a small disparity in the altitude of the stage. He sweeps his hands over the front row as if to pull them closer. As with his lecture at NYU, he empowers the audience, but this time in a different, more physical way. In the prolonged coda of the show, as arrhythmic keyboard washes spread thinly from the lone PA, he tells the crowd, "Just close your eyes and trust everybody in the building. We all good."

2. He lapses between songs into "based" freestyles, which are sort of relaxed, unpressured word streams. "I keep my head down/ I'm walking hopeless/ Every day I keep my mind open/ Third eye open/ I'm dope/ I don't believe in Illuminati/ I don't believe in nothing/ I believe in people."

3. He announces two different upcoming releases: A single from his cat Keke, and a new "classical" album from The BasedGod, who produced the album Rain in England in dense, untethered synths structured around the refrain of "Three Blind Mice." Lil B will not rap over The BasedGod's album. He speaks briefly about California Boy, his upcoming rock album, in a monologue otherwise about Axl Rose. "Why didn't he want to be included in the Hall of Fame?" B asks. "I rock with Axl, man. I'm an old-school Guns N' Roses fan."

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Lil B (lecture)
Eisner & Lubin Auditorium, NYU
Wednesday, April 11

Better than: College.

Lil B walks onto the stage of the Eisner & Lubin Auditorium in a dayglo yellow shirt, which combats for brightness with the stage lights. Those first images you get when you stare at the sun and then close your eyes, the infrared shapes that blossom behind your eyelids? It's as if they'd swollen into shirt form. A scarf draped around his neck is patterned with more tender blondes and greens, and his Vans are firmly aged into a sandy brown, evenly unwashed. It's like staring into an optical illusion: B moves and the light shifts around him. Elemental synths issue from the speakers, gently recalling the sound of his 2010 album Rain in England. It's like a cloud hugging you in the sunlight, warm and enveloping. NYU provides him with a long, clinically-shaped table, on which he leans or illustrates his sleeping patterns. "Nyah, honesty, integrity, loyalty, passion, friendship," go his quixotic naps.

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Editor's Note: Tomorrow night, Lil B is speaking at NYU; yesterday afternoon, he released a mixtape that he said was required listening for the students attending his lecture. We had Brad Nelson, the Lil B scholar who will cover tomorrow's lecture and Lil B's Thursday night performance at the New Museum, chronicle his first reactions to the tape.

At the start of The Basedprint II, the new mixtape by Lil B, he advises us that there's "no need for volume one." On the cover he is hastily photoshopped over Jay-Z, edges widely lassoed, triangles of background newly part of the face. He employed a similar deconstruction of classic hip-hop album art on White Flame, with his smiling absorption of Soulja Slim's Give it 2 'Em Raw. On the cover of Silent President he launched a rendered, golden profile of himself into the ornate and regal teeth of Watch the Throne.

Lil B usually deals in interpolation, from hip-hop and other forms, but the signal-to-noise ratio is always slightly off, misshapen. I'm Gay, his 2011 album, is a tonally straightforward backpack rap album—soul samples, choking strings, rapping as slow darts of consciousness—that, for a song called "I Hate Myself," lands on a gravitationally slowed sample of "Iris" by the Goo Goo Dolls.

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Bring back the home versions of game shows!

Next month MTV2 will debut Hip-Hop Squares, a rap-centric takeoff on the "tic-tac-toe with trivia and celebrities" game show Hollywood Squares. (The non-genre-specific version of the show aired its last episode in 2004.) The show will be hosted by Hot 97's Peter Rosenberg, and MTV has announced a few of the participants already—Nick Cannon, Fat Joe, Biz Markie, and Machine Gun Kelly—but has yet to make public who will be in the center square, which serves as the linchpin of the board and, more importantly, the comedic linchpin of the show. Sure, the reboot is allegedly going to be "more party than game show," and dude-centric-programming perennial Bam Margera is somehow involved. But the tradition of the center square, as established by the ever-acerbic Paul Lynde, is still hallowed, and given its strategic importance in the game it will probably have to be staffed by someone loaded with riffs. (Unless MTV2 goes all crazy on us and turns the "square" into, I don't know, a trapezoid. Hey, it could happen!) Three suggestions for that hallowed spot—and one plea to not use someone who's probably in negotiations with MTV as we speak—below.

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Lil Wayne's mixtapes used to be events in rap. His incredible work on the Dedication and Drought series gave birth to the Mixtape Weezy that could credibly claim to be the best rapper alive in 2006-07, a rapper so good that Jay-Z admitted on his otherwise rapper-loathing "D.O.A." that he "might send this to the Mixtape Weezy." Even Weezy's pre-incarceration tape, No Ceilings, flashed the brilliant, offbeat wit that made Wayne a show-stealer for the better part of three years. Sorry 4 The Wait, released today, finds Wayne getting his show stolen.

Sorry is ostensibly an apologia for the delays plaguing Tha Carter IV, now dropping at the end of August; it could have restarted the hype train for that album, but instead reinforces the growing assumption that Wayne's lost more than a little joie de vivre. The 2011 Weezy is on everything but fire, full of empty threats (having someone else shoot for him is a frequent boast, and admittedly smart for a guy convicted of gun possession), and trotting out come-ons (to "bitches," natch) that won't sound appealing to anyone who has heard Weezy be authentically sexy, as on "Motivation." Listen to the mixtape through and it's hard to decide which of those approaches is most disappointing; catch the "Yeah, Weezy go hard like Cialis" line on the titular outro track—over a stripped-down version of Adele's "Rolling in the Deep"—and it's hard not to feel bad for him, diminished to tellingly flaccid bars.

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So much to see, everywhere.

The Bamboozle
Meadowlands
Friday, April 29-Sunday, May 1

Better than: Watching scene reports scroll by on Twitter.

In a lot of ways, the Bamboozle is a festival tailor-made for the current moment of constant distraction. The festival's running time over three days totals approximately 27 hours. There are eight stages of music, plus a stage for spoken-word and comedy bits. The 100-plus acts run the gamut, from critically approved hip-hop to critically reviled screamo to nostalgia-pricking acts from rock eras past. There's a wrestling ring where luchadores--led by the not very subtly named Dirty Sanchez--fling each other around; if that doesn't satiate your urge to watch competition, there's a breakdancing stage. There are carnival rides. There are tons of merch booths, some of which host autograph signings that attract long, snaking lines of eager fans. There's a psychic, an inflatable structure where one can procure free Trojans, and a place to charge your phone so you can keep up with the tweeting that details all the things you're missing. If you play your cards right and bring enough friends, it's quite possible to get a "full" Bamboozle experience without consciously hearing a single song in its entirety.

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"I see people online saying those are all their favorite Lil B songs, and they had no idea I did them all. I go around everywhere and type my name in the comments to say that I produced them. I do that all the time."

Clams Casino is the producer behind some of Lil B's trippiest and, therefore, #BASED-est beats, from "I'm God" to "Motivation." Until the release of his self-titled instrumentals mixtape last week, his name was known to only the most devoted scourers of Internet rap. But thanks to the tape's mysterious, very un-hip-hop design (a black and white marble image), his wonky producer name, and the beats themselves -- moaning, fractured, noisy things that sound as much like Tim Hecker's Ravedeath, 1972 as they do rap instrumentals -- the 23-year-old North Jersey-based producer is enjoying a wider profile. Earlier this week, we met up with Clammy Clams at a Mexican spot near his house in Nutley to talk about his spaced-out, hypnagogic hip-hop, which just might bring you to tears, it's so beautiful.

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One thousand based gods at last night's Highline Ballroom. Twitpic via Debby LONDON

​"I'm the first rapper ever to write a book in email and text message form," Lil B says from a Highline Ballroom stage, surveying the sold-out room. "At 19! And they had the nerve to call me stupid." Lil B is not stupid. And though he is not the first rapper to write a book, he may well be the first to do it in email and text message form, whatever that is. B has a way with firsts: first concert t-shirt with hashtag on it ("#SWAG"). First rapper to express embarrassment onstage about the chest hair he's just begun growing. First artist I've ever seen to vow to get Botox when he gets older ("I'mma get that plastic surgery, I'mma have tour bus full of young girls!"). First guy to rub up and down on his washboard abs while holding the microphone against them so the audience can hear the sound. (OK, maybe he's not the first to do that one.) And of course: "I'm the first rapper to make an ambient album! Ya'll in the club, listening to ambient music!"

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The Berkley-based rapper Lil B plays the Highline Ballroom on Thursday; for curious New York gawkers, it's a chance to see the world's foremost proponent of a new movement you could kindly term train-wreck rappers -- those artists whose every youthful indiscretion, ill-advised comment, physical altercation, allegation over their sexual orientation, and casual nod toward controversy is projected around the world via the wonders of the Internet. It's like reality-TV rap, where the fun comes in waiting and watching for the derailment, and talking about the idea of the artist is more fun than actually listening to their songs. So in honor of the kid who makes Antoine Dodson seem like the third coming of Rakim, here are five of the current movement's biggest stars.

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One major downside to 2010: There's a pretty good chance you lost your job. The good news, though, is that the concept of NSFW no longer applies, and so today, while your former co-workers are stuck in their cubicles, bored to death and forced to pass around OK Go's latest YouTube meme, you are free to watch the videos below without fear of censure. OK, it's not much, but we're trying. So whether you're at home or your boss is just out of town, here are the 10 best NSFW music videos of 2010.

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