That he could turn a line as bleak as “Push me to the edge/All my friends are dead” (“XO TOUR Llif3”) into a singalong 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 telegraphs almost as loudly as the music.
Lil Uzi Vert told us upfront, in his intro to Playboi Carti’s “wokeuplikethis*”: “I’m a rockstar.” 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 toward hip-hop orthodoxy made him a punk to some and a hero to more.