“XO Tour Llif3” is the sort of song artists spend years trying to write: pained and poised, tapping into a vein that had previously been found but never fully pierced. The “I don’t really care if you cry” taunt that shouldn’t be believed melting into “All my friends are dead/Push me to the edge” is a stretch of masterful songwriting, but withering in a way that few artists could mimic without tipping into self-parody. Its commercial benchmarks—No. 7 on Billboard, Platinum three times over—don’t come close to capturing the depth with which people feel the song. It will probably define Lil Uzi Vert for the rest of his career.
Which is fine, because artists have been plagued by hits with just a fraction of the pathos “XO Tour Llif3” has. But Uzi has been an ascendant star for at least a year and a half: from promising rookie to SoundCloud darling to rap’s A-list and beyond. He’s proven himself a popular force with solo cuts like “Money Longer” and guest turns on Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” and Playboi Carti’s “Woke Up Like This”; dozens, hundreds of imitators across digital mixtape platforms cite him as a major creative influence, or at least a welcome distillation of whatever’s happening in and around the Atlanta scene. And yet in some small way, Uzi’s long-awaited Luv Is Rage 2 is a referendum on whether he can live up to the standard “XO Tour Llif3” set. The goal isn’t a streaming figure or a chart position, but a feeling.
Lofty as that is, Luv Is Rage 2 comes very close to delivering. At its best, the album mines the psyches of exhausted and exhausting people, searching for the moment where enough drugs or heartbreak or iMessages or sleep deprivation can unlock a new part of the brain. It’s the Philadelphia native’s most musically developed work and features a bulk of his most interesting songs to date.
Take “The Way Life Goes,” which is produced by Don Cannon and Ike Beatz. Uzi opens with a brief introduction to the other half of his failed relationship, punctuated with, “I like that girl too much, I wish I never met her.” From there, he launches into a full interpolation of the first verse from Oh Wonder’s “Landslide”: “I know it hurts sometimes, but you’ll get over it/You’ll find another life to live.” Uzi’s less interested in the granular drama of the breakup than in the fallout, the moment three or four days later when reality starts to set in.
Over and over again, Uzi careens past the edge of convention or good social form. “Pretty Mami” is a desperate missive from a tour bus; the excellent song about his mother, “Dark Queen,” sounds less like an ode to a parent than a supernatural reckoning. The plunges into Uzi’s psyche are mirrored by his delivery. He’s chaotically animated, flitting between short staccato runs and heartfelt singing, punctuated by yelps and bug-eyed ad-libs. The perpetual churn of style and song structure can be a strength, or at the very least helps cover up songwriting that can tend toward formlessness. “444+222,” never finds its footing or has much to say, but at least keeps the listener on his or her toes long enough for Ike Beatz and Maaly Raw’s beat to make its imprint.
Rage 2’s production is almost uniformly excellent, poppy and full of air, but with sinister undercurrents when Uzi summons something darker. (For the brighter side, see WondaGurl’s “How to Talk” or Pharrell’s particularly breezy “Neon Guts,” where he also trades bars with Uzi.) If Lil Uzi Vert is innovating anything, it’s a macro approach to the emotion and perspective in his songwriting. The technical aspects—his flows, vocal patterns, and even his vocal registers—owe plenty to his contemporaries and immediate predecessors from Atlanta and Chicago. Metro Boomin and Pierre Bourne’s propulsive “X,” for example, could be lifted from one of the many batches of Young Thug leaks, down to its operative line: “Yeah, my life’s a mess/But I’m also blessed.”
What makes Uzi’s music his own is that instead of a one-off appraisal, he combs through his heart and Gmail to figure out just how the blessings and messiness interact. Luv Is Rage 2 is ultimately a record about keeping it together when your wits and resolve have been tested and depleted. (The Weeknd-assisted radio play “UnFazed” falls flat precisely because Abel’s practiced stoicism doesn’t gel with Uzi’s risk-it-all performance). Whether he’s full of joy or howling into the void, he pushes his songs to their edge, which helps to deliver on the promise shown in his earlier work. We knew Lil Uzi Vert would become one of rap’s biggest stars, but Rage 2 suggests that he may spend his time on top experimenting rather than retreating to a comfort zone.
