Lil Uzi Vert has been pegged as the center of rap’s widening generational gap, his name tied to other dismantlers of rap convention Lil Yachty and Playboi Carti. But he’s mostly a product of the traditional industry machine: He was rapping fast like a ‘little uzi’ when DJ Diamond Kuts started playing him on local radio, which plugged the youngster with DJ Drama and Don Cannon. (He’d later sign with their Generation Now label, an imprint of Atlantic.) Those same radio spins caught the attention of Philly producer Maaly Raw, whose manager grew up with Uzi and linked them. Maaly subsequently became Uzi’s sonic North Star. After that, Uzi was nurtured by the A$AP Mob, particularly the late, great curator A$AP Yams, who was one of the first A&R figures to give the rapper a signal boost. His voice was much leaner then, on a tape interestingly titled The Real Uzi, which seemed to invoke Young Thug. These days he sounds like the offspring of *Bang 2-*era Chief Keef, minus the Xan addiction (See: “7AM”), but then again so do many of his contemporaries: guys like Carti and (to a different extent) Desiigner. What’s separated Uzi from his peers is his ability to distill entire subgenres of rap into a tonal soup, and more importantly, his songcraft, a knack for hooks and an understanding of how Auto-Tune best suits his abilities.
Uzi’s buzz reached a fever pitch on the strength of two love-centric mixtapes: 2015’s Luv Is Rage and April’s Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World, neither of which were really interested in saying anything substantial about romantic love, instead opting to rubber-stamp random songs with hearts and cliches. Lil Uzi Vert songs rarely see thoughts through—perhaps because he doesn’t usually write his lyrics down—so he isn’t really built for the “concept mixtape” formula. It’s odd, then, that he’d continue to chase it with The Perfect Luv Tape, another basic love-inspired outing. The entire tape essentially boils down to a single lyric from “Of Course We Ghetto Flowers”: “You a broke boy got bad luck, don't even talk to me/ You know his girlfriend stalk on me.”
The Perfect Luv Tape is a spiritual sequel to Lil Uzi Vert vs. the World, which was also fascinated by love as a concept, only this time around the central theme, as the opener “Do What I Want” posits, is that Uzi now has enough clout to cut corners. Unfortunately, that occasionally applies to his songmaking, too. Everything is coming easily for Uzi now, and it’s opened a gateway to boredom. Some songs are carefully and skillfully crafted, but the vocal performances are less dynamic. At every turn there is a girl after him, either for his money or his status, or a girl he’s taken from an unknowing boyfriend with little effort. It all becomes pretty dulling after awhile. He hasn’t grown much as a writer, but he’s becoming a pretty epic rambler, stumbling upon gems just by simply drilling away at concepts. The hooks are effortless and earwormy, even when they don’t have a core idea, and his arrangements continue to surprise: some songs have bridges that split verses; others are entirely bridges and hooks.
Even with these new song constructions, though, Uzi seems content to replicate past successes on The Perfect Luv Tape. There are lots of similar tonal ranges to vs. the World, thanks in large part to a similar cast—producers Maaly Raw and Don Cannon, mostly. But Uzi stretches occasionally: See the astronautical space screeches of Nard & B (“Seven Million”), the piano roll-led bass mash of DP Beatz (“Alfa Romeo AW30 (I Can Drive)”), and even a very (uncharacteristically) tropical thumper from Metro Boomin (“Ronda (Winners)”). He embraces an apparent chemistry with both Future and Zaytoven, first exhibited on the Project E.T.: Esco Terrestrial cut “Too Much Sauce,” for the standouts “Money Mitch” and “Seven Million.” Though it doesn’t have the highs or the hits of vs. the World, it is sequenced more carefully and it foregrounds his central appeal: In the spirit of one of his cosigners, Yams, he synthesizes catchy sounds from rap’s most dynamic corners. It might not make him a visionary, but it could make him a star.
