Am I even really a rapper anymore? Starring Lil B (of The Pack)

The Pack are some Bay Area kids who have gained fame for rapping about such topics as vans shoes or skateboarding over bassy, minimal, hyphy kind of beats. Oh, and they seem to be wearing tight pants too. If by now I got you thinking "hipster rap", that was completely unintentional ...



The Pack frontman Lil B has been off on a strange tangent as of lately, launching well over 100 myspace pages each containing a handful of original songs. The pages are said to be numbered chronologically and listening to them feels like listening to a creative diary of sorts. It all starts out pretty conventional with beats that could as well appear on one of The Pack's albums, but somewhere into the second half you can witness an erosion of order with Lil B giving up conventional rhyming in favor of some kind of improvised free-form spoken word vocal style. The music is getting increasingly erratic too, ranging from low-fi rave assault to meditative and abstract synth ambience. You really can't help asking: Is he serious or is he losing it?

Then I stumbled upon this little video and I couldn't resist posting it here (nice synth work + the line "my face in outer space" = definitely cosmic rock material):

Am I even really a rapper anymore?

Am I even really a rapper anymore? Starring Lil B (Of The Pack) from Riveting Entertainment on Vimeo.

I like. And I couldn't care less if he is still a rapper or not. This could be the beginning of some wack Kanye type of overinflated ego rampage. On the other hand, he could be on to something great, expanding and testing the boundaries of what is possible in this age of internet/myspace hip hop.

P.S. Can anyone confirm if this is the Berkeley Pier in the video?


Lil B music page #2
Lil B music page #112