“Yeah, ayy / And her pussy tastes like Skittles / What? Yeah, ayy / You can really taste the rainbow.”
Who could have penned this work? Shakespeare? Dickinson? Dostoevsky?
Nope. Just a humble guy named Lil Xan, spitting poetry over the gentle caress of a Bobby Johnson instrumental.
I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to request for him to at least be considered for a Nobel Prize in Literature. The only musician to have received this high honor to date is Bob Dylan, who, as far as I can tell, has written no lines about pussy. Dylan has been around for about half a century and released 35 albums, only like four to five of which are actually any good. None of them contain any Bobby Johnson beats. I checked.
It is hard to think of two artists more similar than Lil Xan and Bob Dylan, but that is not to say that they don’t have their differences. For example, Bob Dylan has yet to publicly condemn Xanax. One point for Lil Xan. Lil Xan was also once hospitalized because he ate too many Flamin’ Hot Cheetos, which is more self-destructive and interesting than anything Bob Dylan has ever done in his life (other than releasing Knocked Out Loaded). Only one of these artists has released any terrible, preachy contemporary Christian albums in a bizarre mid-career pivot ― so far, every conceivable metric is coming up in favor of Lil Xan.
Bob Dylan seems to think that good storytelling primarily consists of having a lot of different characters, whereas Lil Xan’s literary theory is centered around drugs and sex, both of which are undeniably more interesting than railroad men or whatever. Dylan is considered “counterculture,” but all of his fans freaked out and called him “Judas” when he used an electric guitar. He doesn’t even have any face tattoos (+1 for Lil Xan) — rebellion for Dylan consisted of wearing really ugly jackets and sunglasses while smoking weed and lying about having a heroin addiction. He is also a notoriously terrible live performer (to the point where some of his songs are unrecognizable) who deliberately antagonizes his fans. Lil Xan, on the other hand, is so accommodating that he allows his fans to beat him up after his shows.
I will concede that Lil Xan does not have the edge on Bob Dylan in every category ― they are tied in both their singing ability and their primitive and strophic song structures. Bob Dylan’s voice was, at its best, nasally and challenging. At its worst, especially towards the end of his career, it is redolent of the howl of a dog whose tail has been stepped on. Lil Xan is not much better, but at least he has put out less music.
Lil Xan has never been one for sacred cows, and Bob Dylan is just the latest of the old guard to fall at the hands of a new challenger. I cannot help but be reminded of the Percy Bysshe Shelley poem “Ozymandias”:
“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.”
Legends always fade. Although it might be difficult to imagine now, one day Lil Xan will fall from grace. Much like how he has rendered Bob Dylan irrelevant, Lil Xan’s great works will too be swept away by the sands of time.