Rain in England
| Rain in England | ||||
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| Studio album by Lil B | ||||
| Released | September 21, 2010 | |||
| Genre | Cloud rap, experimental hip hop, ambient | |||
| Length | 1:13:52 | |||
| Label | Weird Forest | |||
| Producer | The Based God | |||
| Lil B chronology | ||||
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Rain in England is an ambient hip hop album by Berkeley, California rapper Lil B, released on the label Weird Forest on September 21, 2010. Produced by Lil B under his persona "The Based God", Rain in England is unusual for the hip hop genre because it has no percussive beats. Instead, Lil B raps over new-age-style synthesizer music. The lyrical style, which finds Lil B speaking on topics like family, love and death, has been noted for its sincerity and reflectiveness.
The album had a mixed reception upon release, and many critics were left baffled by the album's highly unorthodox musical and lyrical content. It has been cited as a particularly idiosyncratic release for hip hop music and an example of Lil B's artistic eccentricities. According to Louis Pattison of The Guardian, the album "transcended familiar notions of good and bad, being one of the most peculiar rap albums ever pressed."
Before Rain in England, Lil B had developed a cult following through social media by sharing music through YouTube and MySpace. Lil B wrote the lyrics to Rain in England in a coffee shop over the course of about a month. It was also his first time producing his own music, though he credited the production as a collaboration with his alter ego The Based God. In advance of the album's release, Lil B told XXL that Rain in England would be "one of the best hip-hop albums to ever come out and one of the most unique albums to ever come out in hip-hop." Lil B described it as "like a melting pot to the soul, just thinking and melting into your emotions", and said the album would deal with both dark and positive themes.
Rain in England is described by Lil B as the first ambient hip hop album. The lyrics, described as meditative and surreal, explore themes like death, life, family, God, birth and gender. Most tracks begin with Lil B announcing the theme, which he then contemplates in a zigzag of free associative thought. Lil B took care not to use profanity at all on the album. The synthesizer music is droning and tonally simple; one critic compared the tonality to the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice". Tom Breihan of Pitchfork called Rain in England "an album of quasi-rap spoken-word over self-produced music even more ambient than the spaced-out, lo-fi synth landscapes he usually raps over." Nitsuh Abebe wrote in Pitchfork's "Why We Fight" column that the album is "beatless washes of new-agey synths with Lil B flowing over them more like the host of a self-hypnosis tape than a rapper."Rain in England has been compared to the music of Brian Eno,Stars of the Lid,Ray Lynch and Tangerine Dream.
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