Aaron Mak is a researcher at Politico.

Brandon McCartney, the rapper better known as Lil B or “The Based God,” is perhaps hip-hop’s biggest puzzle. His scattered oeuvre features thousands of offbeat and often-improvised songs on everything from Ellen DeGeneres to wonton soup to bar mitzvahs. He’s given surreal lectures on topics like veganism and Tinder at universities like MIT and NYU. On Twitter and ESPN, he places what he calls “Based God’s Curses” on NBA players who cross him, which some believe might just be the reason why the Houston Rockets’ James Harden choked in the last seconds of Game 2 in this year’s Western Conference Finals. Slate once described Lil B as the “weirdo rapper”—“a brilliantly warped, post-Lil Wayne deconstructionist.”

Now, the “weirdo rapper” is taking up another unexpected venture: the underdog presidential candidacy of a self-declared socialist senator from Vermont. If you thought Donald Trump giving out Lindsey Graham’s cell phone number or Lincoln Chafee embracing a metric system platform had made 2016 quirky enough, now Lil B has emerged as one of Bernie Sanders’ most ardent supporters, taking to Twitter and getting booked as a TV talking head campaigning for the senator. For an underestimated insurgent candidate who’s drawing some of the biggest crowds of the primary, it’s perhaps a fitting pairing: While Hillary Clinton has been taking selfies with Kanye West and attracting official and unofficial endorsements from Snoop Dogg and Beyoncé, Sanders’ hip hop supporters tend to be more underground figures. (Killer Mike, a politically outspoken anti-establishment rapper and activist, has also endorsed the senator.) Like Sanders, Lil B, whose music was often dismissed and harshly maligned early in his career, finds himself getting more and more attention from onlookers who are delighted with his Dadaist antics.


When I asked Lil B in an interview what he would expect from a Sanders presidency, he at first sounded almost spokesman-like, then, sure enough, betrayed his moony disposition: “I would love to see him do some of the things he says he’s going to do: create more jobs for the people, upgrade things that need to be upgraded, whether it’s the streets or the bridges. He seems like a guy who has feelings, and he’s implementing them into policies.”

The Bernie-Lil B fanfare started in July, when the rapper set off a minor media frenzy after writing dozens of tweets in support of Sanders. (Sample: “I don’t no Bernie sanders but I want to say I love him and his family I hope he represents honesty and love ‪@BernieSanders - Lil B.”) This month, the rapper garnered even more attention when he was interviewed on CNN and MSNBC, praising Sanders (but clarifying that he had not placed a “Based God’s Curse” on his rival Clinton). And the senator seems to be embracing the rapper—not just tweeting his thanks and following Lil B back on Twitter, but also inviting him to a private Los Angeles meeting earlier this month with other entertainers and local figures. Lil B couldn’t attend, but says he still hopes to meet the senator: “Something good is going to happen once I meet Bernie and hear him out more and understand where he’s coming from.”

Antics aside, it’s not hard to see the appeal of the 26-year-old Lil B’s endorsement for a candidate who appeals to young voters, yet hasn’t come close to Clinton in earning the support of celebrities and the entertainment industry. The senator’s @BernieSanders account has less than a third of the Twitter audience of Lil B, who regularly writes pro-Sanders tweets to his 1.28 million followers. The rapper’s MSNBC appearance, for instance, produced thousands of tweets and re-tweets. “I do MSNBC segments three, sometimes four, five times a week,” says James Peterson, director of Africana studies at Lehigh University, who appeared alongside the rapper. “I’ve never gotten such a response from my students.” There is also the race factor. As Black Lives Matter protesters call for Sanders to take a firmer stance against racism, Lil B, whose endorsement has been much discussed on hip hop and indie music websites, is one of the more prominent African Americans to back the senator.

Symone Sanders, the candidate’s national press secretary, playing it close to the vest, says the campaign is glad to have another youth voice and adds, “I think in the coming weeks you will see other younger artists come out for Senator Sanders.”

Lil B got his start roughly a decade ago as a member of The Pack, a hip-hop group of Bay Area high-schoolers that had a local following. After they broke up, he embarked on a solo career, which grew in no small part due to his hyperactive MySpace marketing, in which he released thousands of head-scratching songs for free and developed an outlandish persona. While still not a big-name headliner, Lil B has collaborated with other popular artists like Chance the Rapper and is a regular at music festivals like Coachella.

His foray into politics, however, is relatively recent. He admits he doesn’t know much about policy yet; throughout our interview, he asked me to send him news articles so he could “get a real, non-biased, non-judgmental opinion of these candidates so I can get something truthful.” But he knows he has an audience, and wants to make use of it. “Rappers are definitely role models and definitely should get involved,” he says. “They’re involved in politics whether they like it or not.”

Lil B tested that notion out in 2010, when he released a song called “B*tch I’m Bill Clinton”—including a nod to none other than Sanders’ top 2016 opponent: “Shouts-out to Hillary Clinton. / You about to win that president sh*t. / You’re going to be president soon baby.” He follows the verse by chanting the words “White House,” “swag” and, for some reason, “knife.”

In an online interview with CNN earlier this month, Lil B explained his reasons for switching allegiances from Clinton to the Sanders camp: “She didn’t have any part in trying to march against segregation. She was just a follower,” Lil B said, while pointing out Sanders’ anti-segregation involvement in the 1960s. But he told me he would still vote for Clinton if Sanders doesn’t win the nomination, and he remains a fan of the 42nd president: “I think he was a little bit closer and in touch somehow with the earth and kids, the youth. [Bill] Clinton has an authentic vibe.”

Lil B says his fans, who kept pushing him to learn more about Sanders on Twitter and in person, were the impetus for his pro-Bernie campaign. “The people that love me told me to support him [Sanders], so there must be something good in him, and something similar in how we go about things,” he tells me.

To start, Lil B and Sanders’ idiosyncrasies in their respective fields have contributed to their popularity, especially among millennials. Just as Sanders has fired up a passionate base of progressives, Lil B has, as Pitchfork describes, “some of contemporary music’s most fiercely loyal, spirited, interconnected, mobilized, internet-savvy fans.” In fact, his avant-garde music, childlike earnestness and message of tree-hugging universal love have earned him an almost messianic following. There are online communities of Lil B “task forces” that avow to defend his life and Internet reputation, and his groupies claim to adhere to what they call a “Based” lifestyle, which is a cross between inside jokes (like begging him to have sex with their partners) and a Kumbaya philosophy. As Lil B put it in an interview with the hip hop magazine Complex, “Based means being yourself. Not being scared of what people think about you. Not being afraid to do what you wanna do. Being positive.” When I asked Lil B if Sanders is Based, Lil B said, “He’s definitely Based in his own way, going about politics in his unique way.”

Although he admits he doesn’t know everything about the Vermont senator’s platform, Lil B praises Sanders for his positions on the environment, civil rights, education and the economy. He says those issues should be higher-priority than immigration, which has lately sucked up much of the oxygen in the primaries. “There’s extremely low-income people that are just forgotten about, that are given just whatever—the lowest grade of products, the lowest grade of food, the lowest grade of materials, exposed to horrendous health issues,” the rapper says.

Lil B’s views on race are similarly liberal. Although his music more often deals with topics like “swag” and being Based, he has released songs about police brutality and being black, including “I Can’t Breathe” about the death of Eric Garner in New York, and “No Black Person is Ugly.” Lil B is also expressing more and more indignation of late on Twitter about the legacy of slavery and racial prejudice. On Thursday he Tweeted, “America has crippled the African American community with slavery then segregation and unjust laws, not they ask what’s wrong?!” After a couple hours protesting in this vein, he announced on Twitter that he was starting a “white people owe me a hug anytime” movement, and tweeted at @realDonaldTrump, “hey Donald trump you owe me a hug!!!!! And I want that hug soon.”

As Sanders faces criticism from the Black Lives Matter movement, whose members have stormed several of his campaign events, Lil B has defended the senator. When CNN’s Brooke Baldwin asked the rapper about Sanders’ August 8 Seattle campaign stop, in which two Black Lives Matters protestors interrupted the candidate’s speech, the rapper opined, “I think he handled it very classy. He didn’t leave the stage. He let them speak.” Lil B also noted the senators’ involvement in the anti-segregation movement, repeating a talking point that the Sanders campaign has been pushing in reaction to criticisms from Black Lives Matter. Campaign press secretary Symone Sanders says Lil B is “making a valid point that people have made about the senator’s civil rights record.”

When I asked Lil B if he expected people to be so interested in his political opinions, he claimed, “I’m not that surprised. It’s a long time coming, and I’m ready to do more.” He added, speaking in the third person, “Lil B is definitely a leader and a lot of people respect him.” Given his self-proclaimed influence, I asked if he thinks he should run for president or another political office. “I don’t know man,” Lil B responded. “A lot of people have said that, but it needs to be in your heart.”



At the moment, he seems to be content to be a booster, and expects to get even more involved if and when he meets the senator. Although he missed the August 10 meeting in Los Angeles, Lil B says, “Once we match schedules, it’s going to be great.” Symone Sanders confirmed the invitation and said, “[Lil B] can hopefully come out sometime in the future,” though nothing is set up at the moment.

It’s curious to imagine what a conversation between Bernie Sanders and the Based God would look like—a pairing somewhat reminiscent of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza. Talking with Lil B can make you feel like you’re deciphering book of Confucian proverbs. Sanders, on the other hand, is known for his hardboiled, no-nonsense demeanor. But their similarities as outsiders might outweigh their differences, at least in this election season. Lil B’s music isn’t the sort of thing you’d hear on the Billboard Hot 100 and doesn’t rake in commercial or even record deals. Sanders, meanwhile, has hunkered down on the fringes of Congress with far-left policy views. Both, as a result, have relied more heavily on grassroots support.

“The commercialization of hip hop means that there are different areas of hip hop that are very much aligned and beholden to institutions in electoral politics, like Quincy Jones, Jay Z, Beyoncé,” says Nitasha Sharma, associate professor of African American studies at Northwestern University, who teaches classes about hip hop.

Even though Lil B’s progressive, often-eccentric demographic seems to be ecstatic about the rapper’s endorsement of Sanders, the senator shouldn’t necessarily count on those votes. Lil B says he isn’t encouraging his followers to go to the polls for the senator, suggesting, “I would encourage my followers to do what they want to do and figure out who they respect.” That may very well be the Based approach to 2016.