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 , which seemed to invoke Young Thug. These days he sounds like the offspring of 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.