lil uzi vert xo tour llif3 (y2k remix) 500x500

But definitely not a rapper in the traditional sense.īorn Symere Woods in North Philadelphia in 1994, Uzi first started rapping to one-up a classmate, quickly making the leap to national relevance through features with Young Thug and Migos while building a tight-knit collective of producers and collaborators, known as Working on Dying, at home. That he could turn a line as bleak as “Push me to the edge/All my friends are dead” (“XO TOUR Llif3”) into a sing-along only made him more vital-here was a guy feeling the pain and packaging it in style. Where previous generations of rappers leveraged influence through the boardroom (JAY-Z: “I’m not a businessman/I’m a business, man”), Uzi represents a generation fluent in fashion and social media, not just a recording artist but a kind of creative director whose personality and sense of world-building comes through almost as loudly as the music. Lil Uzi Vert told us up front, in his intro to Playboi Carti’s “Wokeuplikethis*”: “I’m a rock star.” The metaphor wasn’t about dominance so much as it was about flamboyance, for Uzi as a purse-carrying, post-Kanye MC raised on anime and Marilyn Manson, whose indifference towards hip-hop orthodoxy made him a punk to some and a hero to more.

Lil uzi vert xo tour llif3 (y2k remix) 500x500