IT’S LA UZI VERT (Lil Uzi Vert Voice)
After a looong wait Lil Uzi Vert finally blessed his loyal fans with the TRAP ALBUM OF THE YEAR Eternal Atake (yeah I said it). The album debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 selling 247,000 units in its first week (if you don’t pay attention to album sales, it’s a lot for the first week) and is now RIAA certified platinum.
Before I talk about the music, I have to talk about him as a person. There’s just no way you don’t like this guy, he has to be the most free-spirited artist out there. Whether it’s his hilarious interview moments, surprisingly good dancing, or his extreme friendliness to his fans you’ve gotta be a least of fan of his character. The best part about it is this abundance of personality is all incorporated into the music. If you aren’t already a fan, watch this video and that should take care of it.
I’m Ranting, You Can Skip This
If you’ve never listened to Lil Uzi Vert I would recommend listening to this album first. Because of my rational fear that an artist has gone pop, I usually listen to their debut project first. However, LUV’s second studio album EA truly embodies what it means to be Lil Uzi Vert, showcasing a plethora of his talents.
I write this because this is struggle I face when listening to new artists. If I listen to your ENTIRE project and don’t bang with your music, I’ve written you off, I’m sorry. So the moral of that statement is if you’re an artist, it’s simple, DON’T DROP A BAD/RUSHED/SLOPPY PROJECT. Take time and perfect your craft, you may not get a second chance with people. I really don’t know how I ended up on this rant but I needed to get that off my chest 🤷🏾♂️.
And while I’m ranting. It was eating at me that Drake dropped one of his worst songs ever, with a terribly basic dance to it, and he didn’t even make it himself, and it went Billboard #1 and is multi-platinum. Uzi on the other hand dropped an amazing song with a craaazy dance to it and has nothing to show for it. Tik Tok is a dangerous place.
End Rant
Going back, to have avoided a rant, I should’ve said, “If you’ve never listened to Lil Uzi Vert, you’re living under a rock.”
He has hits. If you’ve read any of these articles before, around now would be about the time I’d say “If gun to my head, I had to describe their music, off the dome, it’d be: yadda yadda.” However, I’m not gonna do this with LUV. I actually I should say that I can’t do this with LUV, and I think that should be description enough.
Please don’t let the fact that he’s been called a mumble rapper and makes trap music deter you from the fact that just like Beethoven, Elvis, and Michael Jackson he is an artist. Don’t take what I said out of context, you know exactly what I’m saying 😐.
The beautiful thing about LUV is he makes music like he has split personality syndrome, which is why I couldn’t do the ‘gun to my head’ thing. This was actually confirmed by Uzi in a tweet right after the album’s release. Each of the three different personas boast different styles of music but one things for sure, they all slap.
Baby Pluto
Baby Pluto is personally my favorite character. The jist of Baby Pluto is very obvious, he’s RAPPING. The songs are upbeat, aggressive, and head bopping. This was Uzi’s opportunity to show that he is not a mumble rapper and he ceased it. Mind you, he’s still not exactly a traditional “lyricist”, but understand the principle. In these 6 songs he popped off some crazy bars and crazy flows. The meaning behind Uzi’s name is more surface level then you may think; it originally came about because he’s raps fast, like a machine gun… like a ‘Lil Uzi’. It’s safe to say that he made good on his name here, because when I try to rap along I always have to stop a few times to catch my breath. It’s nonstop and he keeps listeners on their toes with constant flow and voice changes. He also keeps things interesting with loads of iconic quotable lines and bars.
While within these songs the common trend is that he’s just rapping his 🍑 off, each song has its own distinct purposes. If there was any question about whether he can rap for real or not, they were answered in the first three songs and the last song. Then he swings it to “You Better Move”, the most blood boiling song on the record, in which he rhymes every single last bar with ‘move’. Finally he takes it to “POP”, and it’s just down right outrageous and I swear that’s the best way to describe it.
The beats Baby Pluto (and the other two personas) rides on are immaculate. I’ve said this once and I’ll say it until I die, the producers do not get NEARLY enough credit. I hate to say it, but LUV would be nothing without his producers. Not only do they make him sound amazing, and construct the beats for him to sound amazing on, but they also established the outer-space theme, the concept for this album. All of the beats just seem futuristic and he also has some quick interludes where he’s seemingly being abducted by aliens. It’s kind of hard for trap artists to make concept albums, but after almost two years of build-up, he had to make it cohesive and I appreciate them doing what they can. Since you wont hear it anywhere else, the primary producers on the album were Bugz Ronin, Supah Mario, and the collection of Working On Dying.
Renji
I’m pretty sure this is short for ‘Orenji’ and came to being when Uzi had his hair dyed orange. This character is similar to Baby Pluto but much more melodic. He still fires off that machine gun style flow occasionally, but I would say Renji is the closest form Uzi gets to pop music. However, Renji is a lot more complicated to decipher because Uzi also claims the album’s facades are split between each of the nine songs, going halfway into Renji. I mentioned before that the skits performed detail Uzi being abducted into space, this elicits the outwardly more aggressive style Uzi displays. Conversely the last nine songs are much more light hearted, because he’s supposed partying in space, confirmed by Uzi in the tweet below. Again, feeding into the concept of the album.
Uzi
Lastly is the Lil Uzi Vert we all know and love. His work never feels repetitive to me, it seems like with every new song I hear from him it’s a surprise. With the first two personas all of the songs had a similar objective or vibe, but this last one is just all over the place. I’d expect nothing less and that’s why he’s one of my favorite artists. Just within six songs he’s got his version of an R&B song, a dance track, a song that geniusly samples a classic, and a sequel to his highest selling song ever. You cannot categorize him, saying he’s a rapper isn’t enough.
But Yeah…
I really hope that LUV’s ingenuity as an artist doesn’t go unnoticed. Often times people get a little to caught up in genres and they’re much too broad. You can’t categorize and artist like him, he has way to many styles on the pedestal. This is definitely a something-for-everyone type of album. Whether you like hard rap, soft rap, or pop rap it’s there. Oh, and I didn’t even touch on the deluxe version, that’s got some bangers as well too. But overall I was really pleased with this album and it was certainly worth the wait (even though I know it didn’t take him that long to actually make it). It was very thoughtful and complete and like I said it was the trap album of the year, don’t @ me
Thanks for reading 🙂
Stupendous review of Uzi 💯💯
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