Beer And Rap

BEST KID EVER

willystaley:

People know that Lil B didn’t “coin” the term “based,” right? It was two other rappers from Berkeley called Team Knoc, which if you read my old blog, Nation of Thizzlam, you would be way too familiar with.

There was a sound coming out of Berkeley and Oakland around 2007, from neon-clad skater kids, that borrowed some of the synth-heavy aspects of Hyphy music, but ditched all the creepy-old-guy on ecstasy aspects of it. Tib and Sirealz, who were Team Knoc, called it “Based,” instead of post-Hyphy, which was a label some bloggers had slapped on to it. Remember the A’z? The Diligentz? Go Dav? Probably not? Well, that’s the sound that Team Knoc was talking about. The closest it came to being a personal philosophy was the rule against wearing matching clothes. To a certain extent, it was goofy and self-effacing in the way that Lil B can be, but I was always under the impression that “Based” referred to a production sound.

Then, Young L put out Cutty Row/Based Sensation, which was a double album featuring two different sounds Young L was trying out, post-Pack. Cutty Row had the track “B.A.S.E.D.” on it, which is confusing, because CR is the album that featured L’s signature production sound on it; Based Sensation featured Young L singing over some more based — in the current sense of the word — production. Perhaps you remember “Centerfold”? (Which I have listened to more times that I’d care to admit.) The rest of it was pretty bad — not sensational, as the title would suggest — and L has since ditched the sound for his more, you know, listenable stuff.

Cutty Row/Based Sensation came out in 2009, right around when Lil B was making a bunch of Myspace pages, and I just thought he was losing his shit, or on drugs. I mean, maybe he was, but he seems to be past it, and much more successful for it. I only point this out because people like to mention how amorphous the “based” “philosophy” is when they write about Lil B — because it is — and maybe this short history of the word will shed light on why he cannot explain what it means; it wasn’t “his” word originally, though it had no clear definition prior to his use of it.

saw go dav at slims, so so amatuer but that’s what made it fun. I miss team knoc. those dudes had slaps. It feels crazy to reminisce about the days of mid-late 00’s based shit, it wasn’t that long ago but I guess that’s the nature of the information superhighway’s effect on rap musics. everyone has ADD now and the ghosts of raps no so distant past are being disregarded for the new bleeps that bleed out of your shitty laptop speakers