Hope you're not sick of hearing about
Lil B yet, but if you are, you might want to just fast-forward through 2k11. It's shaping up to be a pretty Based year, what with the Berkeley's rapper's
MTV appearance,
XXL Freshman class cover, SXSW
appearances (
juiced up by Diddy and Odd Future), and even
a new single that sounds basically like, well, a good rap song.
And now this: Long an irregular presence on the live stage -- over the last year, the Internet star played two sold-out shows to ministers of the blogosphere in New York, but no headlining hometown sets -- Lil B recently inked a deal with tour giant Live Nation for a string of shows around the East Coast and the Midwest. He also lined up a headlining show at
Mezzanine here in San Francisco, set for April 21.
"It's for sure the first [Bay Area] show of this new era of people being aware of Lil B," his manager, Sebastian Demian, tells
SF Weekly.
It might also be a sign of what's in the future for Brandon McCartney, a
21-year-old member of East Bay rap collective the Pack. The Live Nation
deal is only four shows and two festival appearances, but Demian says
he's hoping to expand that to a larger tour. And the fact that Live
Nation made a deal with Lil B -- an independent artist who isn't signed
to any label -- is surprising on its own. Demian says the people he
worked with Live Nation couldn't remember making such an agreement
before.