A typical Lil Uzi Vert song boils down to a few core topics: the millions in his bank account, the cars an average person wouldn’t know how to start, jewelry that wouldn’t shine on anyone else, clothing brands that most can’t pronounce, and girls who would never bat an eyelash at someone other than Uzi. But a typical Lil Uzi Vert song also sounds like it was ripped from a harddrive that fell out of the back of a spaceship, all delivered with a medley of influences from the generations that came before him. There’s the spirit of Meek Mill freestyling on Philadelphia street corners, the breakneck pace of G Herbo, the melodic designer-brand fever dream of a True Religion-wearing era Chief Keef, injected slightly with the pint-sized angst of punk-pop heroines like Hayley Williams of Paramore. There’s a reason why the Philly rapper’s leaks and snippets are traded like rare baseball cards in corners of the internet that stream more YouTube than Spotify. There’s nothing else like it.
But in the last two years, Lil Uzi Vert songs have become scarce. Shortly after the release of Luv Is Rage 2, the 2017 album that made Uzi a star, he entered label purgatory. Beginning in January 2018, Uzi began to vaguely hint that his Generation Now label bosses DJ Drama and Don Cannon were preventing him from releasing new music—he only dropped one solo song in 2018. In the meantime, while Uzi beefed with a suicide cult, squared up with Rich the Kid in a coffee shop, had a short-lived retirement, and became a semi-professional Triller dancer, his delayed third album, Eternal Atake, developed a mythical aura. It became known by fans as the Uzi opus forever locked away by greedy label heads, but, if it ever did find its way out into the world, it would be a landmark moment for an entire generation. The expectations were otherworldly.
And somehow, Uzi met those expectations. Eternal Atake is Uzi’s greatest album to date, a scope-defying hour-long epic that couldn’t be made by anyone else. It’s a seamless blend of drill-influenced rapping, melodic crooning, and beats that are aware of hip-hop’s trends, but stretch them to places unimaginable. A high-stakes feat, accomplished through a creative kinship with the Philly production collective Working On Dying and Uzi’s increased attention to detail—in the world of Eternal Atake, every spaced-out sample is just as important as any animated punchline.
Eternal Atake has a loose concept—something about abductions, aliens, and space, alluded to with a few skits and an album trailer—but none of that really matters. The album is 18 Lil Uzi songs about money, the luxury that money buys, the girls attracted to that luxury, and the heartache brought on by those girls, a feeling that has always inspired his music. Except, this time, his detail is richer. Uzi is not just compiling a list of brands; he paints colorful scenes down to the specificity of his Air Forces or a tag on his beanie.
Lil Uzi Vert has never rapped this well. He has always been capable, but much of his breakout mixtapes took a bright and singsongy approach to pair with his lovestruck personality. On “Silly Watch,” Uzi’s pace is relentless: It’s like sitting in the passenger seat while Uzi, head barely over the steering wheel, cruises into triple digits. “She look good, but she wear Fashion Nova/Took her shoppin’, put her right in some Vetements,” says Uzi, like every line is stepping on the one before it. “You Better Move” is similar, as Uzi fires off puns referencing forgotten pop culture tokens from his past—Blue Eyes White Dragon, Zoom, a Microsoft Zune—over a freakish Working On Dying beat, sampling sounds from “Space Cadet 3D Pinball,” which used to come pre-loaded with Windows. Uzi switches flows with ease, takes pauses that feel like a sudden pull of the emergency brake, and finishes every line with a high-pitch squeal that rivals Future on “King’s Dead.”
Uzi and Working On Dying really gel on “POP.” On a beat that sounds like it’s from the dystopian world of The Terminator, Uzi goes on the most intense Soho shopping spree: “I went to the store and got me some Vetements/Pradas and Balenci’, Balenci’, Balenci’,” he says like his voice is near-breaking. He goes on to name the brand “Balenci’” another 15 times, one of the countless unexpected moments that are not over-thought—the maximized version of the Uzi persona. Listening to Uzi rap this free is like watching an Olympic swimmer: He’s flying and I’m exhausted for him.
Eventually, Uzi takes his foot off the gas and weaves a melody in between his bars. “Celebration Station” is near-perfect, as Uzi sings and rolls his Rs: “And I can’t do my dance cause my pants, they from France,” he says, not joking. Then, there’s the delirious ballad “Chrome Heart Tags.” It’s bigger, but Uzi is still rapping about heartache and brands few can afford. The glorious mess of a beat is by Chief Keef, who wields drums that wouldn’t sound out of place on a Flockaveli-era Lux Luger beat paired with vocal samples that make it sound like a nightmare influenced by hallucinogens. Uzi and his producers aren’t reinventing the genre, but reimagining it, blending production and melodies of the last decade in hip-hop, while pushing it forward. At once, it feels like both the past and future.
On Eternal Atake you won’t find any pop songs—even a Backstreet Boys interpolation gets flipped on its head—or any attempts at being a rockstar—it’s a rap album. For a while, in the 2010s, many of Uzi’s SoundCloud peers were fed the nonsense that for a rapper to reach superstardom, they had to break down the genre’s barriers. But that was wrong: Hip-hop is limitless. Lil Uzi Vert made an event album, where the main attraction is flex raps and production that builds on its roots. Not even two years (an eternity in rap) was able to hold back Eternal Atake, an album that will be chased for years to come.
