Lil Beck has been part of the 'indie' rock scene in Los Angeles since 2005, playing shows at LA clubs like the Knitting Factory and appearing as one of the headliners at a 2008 tribute to the Replacements in Sonoma organized by ‘Mats biographer Jim Walsh. LB’s latest release, "Life After Hip Hop," is his fourth full-length CD on Chicago’s NeedleDrop Records in as many years. He’s also released several solo EPs and one with his side project Carman 9. He’s been reviewed and interviewed in 'zines like Babble and Beat and Origin Story. Many have compared him to Johnny Thunders, Lou Reed, Paul Westerberg, the Stones, and Tom Verlaine. Astute reviewers like Supernautica’s Dr. Benway and the guys at the Global Virtual Homemade Music Radio Show might also point out his ties to country and electric blues via artists like Leadbelly, Robert Johnson and Elmore James. Although a certain member of LB’s back-up band The White Boys has no idea who Elmore is. "Life After Hip Hop" features a kiss-off to the 1960s era of excess called “Stuck Inside of Glendale w/ the Sedgwick Blues Again.” It’s a tribute to Edie Sedgwick and a diss of Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol for the way they treated the Factory Girl before she disappeared into a series of New York institutions for several years, briefly re-emerging to finish filming the cult classic "Ciao! Manhattan" in Southern California before she died. Dylan wrote of Edie, “she takes just like a woman, she aches just like a woman, but she makes love just like a little girl.” Lil Beck turns Dylan’s famous phrases against him, singing, “She was Rainy Day Women 12 & 35, she was the 60s come alive, that old bitch Diana Vreeland told me so, in ’66 she put Edie on the cover of Vogue.” The next verse is a little harsher: “Well, she made love just like a woman, she had an achy-breaky heart like one, too. She hid the speed inside her shoe. She shook off them Sweet Virginia blues. But Bobby D, he didn’t fuck no men. As far as I know, not with his own dick. So unless he was screwin’ round with some real young chicks, I don’t really think he made that charge stick. But print the legend, send it Western Union. Edie Sedgwick, ’43 to ’71.” There are 11 more tracks. The title track, “Life After Hip Hop,” is a Beck Hansen-style blend of Hip Hop and alt-rock that’s an answer to Nas’s 2006 claim that “Hip Hop Is Dead.” LB wrote this tune mainly because Hip Hop isn’t dead. The song also references something Pavement sang back in 1994, “It’s the end of the rock n’ roll era.” Back then, gangsta rap was taking over the game. LB’s got much love for all the MC's made Hip Hop “internationally known, nationally recognized and locally accepted.” But to quote the late great Senator Blutarski aka John Belushi in Animal House, “Nothing is over until we say it is.” Rock isn’t dead either, no matter how many wack muthafuckas like Blonde Redhead are getting love from all the hipsters. LB loves all the playa haters too, because all the hatin’ only makes success that much sweeter. LB wrote an ode to hatin’, "Behind Every Success Lies a Pack of Haters," which goes out to all his enemies. Who he knows really love him deep down inside. Way deep down inside. <a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Lil+Beck">Read more on Last.fm</a>. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.