You know the routine: wake up, wipe the sleep out of your eyes and … grab your phone. Check your notifications. Two texts — both from your mom. Ignore those for now. An email — ah, it’s from Travelocity. Never mind. Three Snapchats from your high-school buddy! These should be interesting. Oh, nope, it’s just him screaming along to “Fancy” in a nightclub with strobe lights. Make your way over to Facebook. Nothing there. Instagram? Nothing. Twitter. Yes, Twitter won’t fail you.
Sad thing, it usually does. But today, Wednesday, Sept. 17, it didn’t. When scrolling through my phone as I woke up, I saw something so incredible I had a hard time believing what I was reading. If true, it’d change my life.
9/17/14, 7:36 AM: @LilBTheBasedGod (Lil B From The Pack) I designed and developed my first app personally Real based comes from Lil B directly Basedmoji by Brandon Mccartney
Did my eyes deceive me? Could it be true? Could Lil B … be releasing an app? No morning grogginess remained; I was at full attention now. I sat up and mashed that link until a little white square with Lil B’s face appeared on the home screen of my iPhone 5. Underneath the app read the words “basedmoji.”
My mind raced through all of the possibilities. Basedmoji … could this be a collection of Lil B emojis? But how? Wouldn’t Lil B need to create an entire iOS keyboard for his own emojis? This sounded like a ground-breaking feat of engineering, a true foray into an unfamiliar land of communication. I wasn’t ready for this.
Nay, but I was. Yes, yes, I was. I clicked on the app, and a home screen popped up. Filling up most of the white background was a cartoon drawing of Lil B’s face, complete with sunglasses and a large earring on his left ear. Below the sketch were icons of various social networks — Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. The buttons took you to each of Lil B’s respective networks. I then had a heretical thought. “This isn’t much,” I remarked, to myself. “ Could Lil B have failed me? Could the promise of “basedmoji” have already died like a flower in the sun?
I almost closed the app in a fit of rage. Desperate, I glanced back at the Lil B sketch on the home screen, a “basedmoji” speech bubble dribbling out of his mouth. Could the sketch be interactive? I clicked the Lil B face, and the whole world opened up at my fingertips.
It’s as if I’d walked outside into the blackness and someone flipped on a lightswitch, illuminating the truth in a place only known before as chaos. Everything made sense; everything was right. A cornucopia of emojis filled my screen and my heart.
Nearly every emoji included a picture of Lil B or a Lil B-attributed quote. Many stayed fairly standard — a picture of Lil B, a black-and-white Lil B saying “Kool” in a thought bubble. But many made brave forays into social commentary — an emoji with Lil B holding the hands of both a black woman and a white woman, an emoji of Lil B seemingly taking a selfie with an iPad, an emoji with Lil B holding a book and the words “Stay in school — Lil B” floating above his head.
I wasted no time blasting off Lil B emojis to every single person in my contact list. In response to a “Can I have some $ — Lil B” emoji, my friend Cameron responded, “What the fuck is that?” Upon receiving a “Thank You Based God” emoji complete with a picture of prayer hands, my friend Lynn replied, “Why is this happening to me.”
It was OK — genius takes a while to resonate. One emoji on the Lil B “#basedemoji” app sits at the bottom of the emoji list. The visual is a green book with an apple on top. Surrounding the image are words: “Lil B Made History.” Yes, you did, Lil B.
Yes, you did.
