Pay it Forward: Tony Bontana on Lil B

Birmingham’s Tony Bontana, whose “splayed” hip-hop is in full, glorious effect on his latest album My Name, gives flowers to the rapper who set him on his idiosyncratic path: Lil B

I was a huge fan of Tyler, the Creator, Odd Future, all that stuff that was kicking off in 2009, 2010. In one of their YouTube videos, they were dancing around to Wonton Soup by Lil B. Instantly, I was like: Yo, I need to know everything about this – what this is, who this is. It started from there, really. He was inspiring people like Tyler and all these things that were going on in the States, and that kind of trickled down – and now I’m here, you know what I mean? It’s insane when I think about how impactful Lil B was, and is.

It was first of all the sound I enjoyed. In terms of this kind of modern trapwave we’re still in now, I feel like it was one of the first peaks. And then, when you look into it and you see, Oh shit, there’s all this music, it was like, wow. It was the carefreeness; it didn’t ever feel like he didn’t care about the music, but it definitely felt like there was no restraint or barrier. The main thing I got from him is the feeling and the freedom.

As with anything you grew up with, I’ll have time periods I’ll go back to. There’s a song called I Love You, on the God’s Father tape from 2012; that song, and the video where he’s in a pet shop with all these animals and he’s crying – as a young Black kid, you just didn’t see stuff like that. Obviously, shouts to Kool Keith and all the weird rappers from the past, but in terms of my generation and what was around when I was growing up, he was that guy. It was so pivotal. I don’t think it’s obvious, the effect he’s had on rap and hip-hop, but it’s definitely there. There’s a big tree, and I think a lot of branches come back to Lil B, a hundred percent.

In 2020, during Covid, I woke up early one morning and, for whatever reason, I was like: OK, I’m going to make a beat for Lil B. I made the beat and emailed it to him – this is just me shooting in the dark at this point – and he got back to me; he liked the song and he put it on a tape. So on the Gutta Dealership mixtape that came out in 2020, there’s a song called Educated that I produced early in the morning in my apartment in Birmingham. That was a crazy, full-circle moment, and it put a battery in my back, letting me know I was doing something right.