Lil B is basically the hip-hop Andrew WK. Despite being a middling, highly mediocre rapper he’s been able to parlay that into some sort of a motivational speaker role “spreading a positive message” and has built some sort of massive cult of personality around himself. It’s baffling.

Lil B used to be in a rap group called The Pack, which had one big single called “Vans” back around 2006. Since then, Lil B has released hundreds and hundreds of songs for free over the internet. By the law of averages, a few of those songs (and by a few I mean perhaps ten) happened to be good. He released an album – the attention baiting “I’m Gay” – and it was pretty good, actually, all things considered, coming across like a hip hop version of an early Robin Williams standup album. Most shocking, however, is the fact that he has a league of adoring fans who seem to hang on his every word and called him “The Based God.” I know. I know. This somehow must be how he scored this speaking engagement at NYU. Either that or Tao Lin is having the last laugh by having this be some sort of elaborate performance piece.

Quoth the Based God to Fuse TV earlier this week:

“They reached out to me via email. Respect to NYU because they really see what I give to the world and they really believe in me. Respect to [NYU President] John Sexton. I got swag like Sexton. Spread the positive. I wanna keep that super secret until we get there, but what I will tell you is that I specialize in the progression of humans. It’s gonna be a real progressive talk and when everybody leaves, their lives will be changed.”

So there’s that. We’ll keep you posted on what happens after this apparent rapture takes place.

[Hypetrak]