Lil B, born Brandon Christopher McCartney in Berkeley, California, is a rapper and internet personality whose coining of the term “based” produced one of the most widely adopted slang terms in online political discourse.

Early Career and The Pack

2004-2009 McCartney began rapping at age 15 as part of the Bay Area hip hop group The Pack. The group gained attention during the hyphy movement, with their 2006 single “Vans” ranked by Rolling Stone as one of the year’s best songs. The Pack released their debut album Based Boys in 2007.

Solo Career and Internet Pioneering

2009-2015 Launching his solo career, Lil B adopted a prolific, internet-first approach to music distribution that was unconventional for the era. He created over 100 MySpace accounts to share music and released an enormous volume of material through YouTube and free mixtapes, bypassing traditional record label gatekeeping. This approach earned him recognition as a pioneer of internet-native music and the cloud rap subgenre.

His online persona, “The BasedGod,” developed a dedicated following through his distinctive approach to social media engagement. On Twitter, he personally followed over a million users and maintained continuous direct interaction with fans, an approach that contrasted sharply with the managed, curated social media strategies typical of public figures at the time.

Origin and Spread of “Based”

2010s Lil B reclaimed the term “based,” which had originated as a pejorative shortening of “basehead” (a term for someone who uses freebase cocaine). He redefined it to mean being authentic, positive, and unconcerned with others’ opinions of one’s self-expression.

The term spread from hip hop culture into broader internet culture. Around 2014, during the Gamergate controversy, “based” began to be applied as an honorific in online political communities, with figures being called “based” for taking stances perceived as defying mainstream consensus. The term gained traction on platforms such as 4chan, Reddit, and Twitter, evolving from its original hip hop context into a widely used piece of internet and political vocabulary.

By the 2020s, “based” had entered mainstream usage with a more diffuse meaning, used across various online communities to express approval of perceived authenticity or boldness.

Political Engagement

2015-2016 Lil B engaged directly with electoral politics, initially expressing support for Hillary Clinton before publicly switching his endorsement to Bernie Sanders in a series of tweets. He cited Sanders’s decision to follow him on Twitter as evidence that the candidate valued listening to a wide range of voices. He also spoke publicly about issues including income inequality, racial justice, and the private prison system, and was interviewed on CNN about his political views and involvement with the Black Lives Matter movement.

Digital Political Impact

Lil B’s influence on digital political culture includes:

• Coining the term “based,” which became one of the most widely used terms in online political discourse across the ideological spectrum
• Pioneering a DIY, internet-first approach to music distribution that bypassed traditional industry gatekeepers
• Demonstrating a model of direct, personal social media engagement that influenced how public figures interact with audiences online
• Engaging with political figures and movements through social media in ways that blurred the boundaries between entertainment and political discourse
• Influencing a generation of artists and internet personalities, with figures such as Kendrick Lamar, Tyler the Creator, and Playboi Carti citing his impact

Lil B represents a significant case in the history of how cultural language originating in music and internet communities can migrate into political discourse, taking on new meanings and associations as it spreads across different online spaces.