Liam Thomas McManaman | Staff Illustrator

Underground rapper artist Lil Sperm has 82 monthly listeners on Spotify, where his biography describes how he “strives to push is craft further each release and is a very fat man.” Despite initially taking this album as a joke, I can say now that “b4bhold,” his newest album, is bold, antagonistic, and utterly genuine — a fusion of off-kilter, experimental rap and found sound slam poetry. No laughing matter at all. 

Listening to “b4bhold” is an experience I can only imagine is akin to watching “Twin Peaks” while peaking on acid in your sleep. There’s an eeriness that comes from the off-pitch backing vocals like the screams of forgotten gods in lost corners of the universe — it’s positively Lynchian. Every one of the 11 tracks on “b4bhold” has the same surreal production defined by frenetic, uneven drums, heavily distorted vocals and samples of inscrutable origin. There doesn’t seem to be a thematic throughline to the album, but “b4bhold” contains recurring motifs of scatalogical humor, incest, and a startlingly high number of extremely sexual adlibs in a text-to-speech voice.

Yet in its entirety, this album may be the most humanizing project I’ve ever listened to, in a way that makes me feel my humanity. On tracks like “the beginning,” I am made aware of my cosmic nothingness, and my raw exposure to the ever-encroaching vacuum of an indifferent universe. 

There are distinct points where this project appears to be the work of a deranged personality, the kind bold enough to name his musical project “Lil Sperm.” We live in a post-ironic world where excessive stimulation is the defining hallmark of entertainment, and where, due to the increasing presence of artificial intelligence, we can no longer trust our eyes and ears to determine what is real or not. Lil Sperm captures the manic, jumbled energy of a world dominated by plutocrats, social media, and regimes of truth, blurring the line between jest and solemnity. 

Five stars. No notes.