On Sunday night (October 1), 64-year-old Stephen Paddock opened fire from a 32nd floor window of Las Vegas’ Mandalay Bay hotel on the attendees of the Route 91 Harvest country music festival taking place across the street. As of writing, 59 people are dead and 527 are injured, making it the deadliest shooting in U.S. history.
Celebrities took to social media to react to the tragedy, but none quite like rapper Lil B.
In a 76-tweet, nearly 12-hour discourse, the Based God began by relating Vegas’ mass shooting to that of rapper Young Dolph last week before opining about America breeding (and white people perpetuating) violence, lacks of bravery, obsessions with statistics, the mistreatment of Blacks, systemic racism, and teaching American History in schools. He name-checked conservative political correspondent Tomi Lahren, Mexican boxer Canelo Alvarez, and the movie Roots, and pointed out the hypothetical double-standard that a mass shooting of Black victims at a rap concert would have provoked instead. He then seemed to have a change of heart toward the end, however, when he expressed shame in being driven by negativity and called for the banishment of weapons and continued to promote love and unity.