The creative liberation necessary for output that consistent was revolutionary.

But the secret meaning of Lil B roomie bro and I mutually understood, yet needn’t ever state explicitly, was how he demanded the attention of every demographic, and forced each to question their assumptions: Lil B’s troll element—his outfits, his apparent lack of artistic talent, his funny ad libs—made him an internet phenomenon anyone seeking to ‘understand the times’ had to pay attention to; his emotional/subversive songs, like the “I Love You” video he cried in, the I’m Gay (2011) mixtape, even weirder, confusingly subversive songs like “I’ma Eat the Ass” (scrumptious!) made him someone woke kids had to at least peep; but most—I repeat most—importantly, his bars weren’t separate from the ‘vulgarity’ of real street rap.

Songs like “Suck My Dick Ho,” “Pretty Bitch,” “Bitch Mob Anthem.”

What differentiated Lil B from rappers disconnected from the actual risk of rap (de facto exclusion from ‘proper society’) who were making funny songs poking fun at some of rap’s more homophobic or misogynistic aspects.

Lil B did do these things.

But he wasn’t on the outside looking in.

Lil B forced hood kids and even suburban kids who idolized hood kids for all the wrong reasons, to reckon with his ‘no homo’–subverting homo songs, his emotional songs, which they wouldn’t have HAD HE NOT ESTABLISHED THAT STREET/HOOD CREDIBILITY.

While, at the same time, forcing proper, white, woke kids to reckon with the puritanical, ultimately fascistically Western roots of their apparently woke language-censoring.

For this, the subtlety of his subversion (where you couldn’t, like with Bolaño, quite decide ‘whether or not he was an idiot’), Lil B was the goat.

Yet this also made the fact that there was actually a group of protesters there, protesting that show—that religious gathering—so mind-melting.

The ass-backwards-ness.

Lil B, who mighta single-handedly killed ‘no homo’ as a relevant phrase in rap.

Who did so much for gender fluidity in ACTUAL MAINSTREAM CULTURE by calling himself a Pretty Bitch.

Those protesters were the same kids who looked down on me and roomie bro for describing a Nietzsche or Heidegger bar as Lit or Fire in the existentialism class we met in. That I met ex bae in.

Who perpetuated, linguistically, the sort of classism they thought they were fighting.

Who was to say “Suck My Dick Ho” meant hateful misogyny?

You were the one saying that! if you were saying that.

And in so doing, excluding a whole faction of society from your gang—incidentally the exact group your causes purportedly sought to help.

To LIFT UP.

Yeesh.

Too fkng cringe, bro.

“Suck My Dick Ho” meant a gender-nonspecific feeling.

Meant whatever Lil Brandon’s cheeky grin in the “Suck My Dick Ho” music video meant to you.

•

Around 2 p.m.

Sitting on a beach towel in a row of beach towels.

Squinting.

Tryna read but too stoned.

Edible-stoned.