#72 - Im Gay (I'm Happy) by Lil B
I didn't think I'd write 1,000 words about Lil B
Title: Im Gay (I’m Happy)
Artist: Lil B
Length: 44:25 (12 tracks)
Label: BasedWorld
Year: 2011
Earlier this year, I realized I have spent (in various capacities) over 15 years on college campuses. From that time, I have nothing new to add about what it means to figure out who you are, understand what you believe, and learn how to become an agent in your life. What I do have, however, is a massive soft spot for young people earnestly committing themselves to figure that stuff out. Lil B was 21 when he made I'm Gay (I’m Happy)1, and it’s (for better and for worse) the album a 20-year-old would make. When you have lots of thoughts about the world, how it’s messed up, how it should be, how do you actually say that?"
How do you explain Lil B? Lil B is a rapper who became a cult figure of internet rap in the early 2010s. He may have been our first internet rapper; he would interact with anyone who tweeted at him and had a stream-of-consciousness Twitter account that ranged from 2008-style “random” posting to pre-Alt Right Kanye West-style illusions of grandeur. He also recorded a lot of music. His what we would now call meme songs fueled the bulk of his popularity. It was fun, silly, irreverent, and simultaneously very good and kinda bad at the same time. The cult of personality around him grew, including an NYU lecture where he knighted a pre-stardom Timothee Chalamet.
So, Lil B was very online. He was an artist who understood the internet and was the subject of parasocial relationships from Obama-era millennials. Most of his music was hastily made, didn’t say much, and was intended to be played as loud as possible. Alongside all of this, Lil B's music and persona had an element of earnestness and positivity. This ranged from having a song called “I Love You” and crying at a pet store to leading a guided meditation at a music festival.
Was this brand of public hyper-positivity a bit? I have no idea, but this album is Lil B’s most thorough attempt to flesh out his feelings about, well, everything.
In the context of his other mixtapes, Lil B is trying to take this album seriously. There are no “Wonton Soup” or mad-libs songs on this record. His production leans heavily on samples and largely avoids choruses, which gives his lyrics more room to breathe. Which, about that. Do you remember how conservatives in 2015 would downplay Trump’s proto-fascism with “You have to take him seriously, but not literally?” This is how I feel about Lil B on this album. If you closely read the lyrics, dismissing them as underwhelming, trite, or platitudes is easy2. The improvisational and free association lyrics were an element of his house style of “based” music. Every rough draft is a final draft. This has pretty low stakes when you have lyrics like: “Met a cool girl, and her boyfriend’s homeless/I’m so beautiful I look like Moses/I look like Fabio/Young Ted Danson”3. It’s a tougher hang when you’re doing extemporaneous rapping about ways to liberate the population from collective mental oppression. Lil B’s vocal delivery of this album does the heavy lifting toward his end goals. The intonation and pacing of his lyrics say a lot more about what he’s trying to convey than the actual lyrical content. Reading Lil B’s lyrics for “Gon Be Okay” is a different experience from hearing him trying to manifest a better future, saying: “I just want us to be okay.” Moving through the record, it is abundantly clear what Lil B’s MO is: he is not trying to make a cool album in favor of creating music that reflects how he feels and who he wants to be.
If you, dear reader, asked me for 75 of the best rap albums of the past 25 years, Im Gay (I’m Happy) is not on that list. This is not a good rap album. BUT! If you buy into Lil B (which I do) and think he’s not a complete media creation or persona (which I do), this album can be viewed as an affecting portrait of a young person trying their best to say what they feel. I hope to God that I am better at almost everything in my life than I was when I was 20, but I am too much of a coward to commit any of it to recorded media. It’s the musical equivalent of the 2 am dorm room conversation: no one makes much sense, and you’d be embarrassed to read a transcript of it later, but it feels important in the moment. If you approach it on its terms, the radiating spirit of this record makes up for the shortcomings in the craft. Im Gay, I’m Happy is an album that makes me appreciate the process of becoming in all of its stages.
One for the Road
One benefit of Lil B’s firehouse approach to releasing music was the breadth of producers he worked with. Clams Casino was the artist behind some of Lil B’s best songs. His first instrumental mixtape documents his sound and holds up just as well (if not better) than the final songs.
I’m taking Lil B at his word that the album title is a genuine but underdeveloped way of trying to support queer people. Nothing about the album hints at the title being ironic or attempting to be a slur, so I’m operating in good faith.
Actual lyrics. I am not funny enough to make those up.