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Lyrically, he’s back on his shit, flaunting his newfound superstardom with the already iconic “Higher than Elon Musk” line, all the while proceeding to position himself as one with the stars as he trades bars with a characteristically laidback Pharrell, silky smooth over his own explosive beats. Neon Guts is a definitive club anthem, with bouncy 808s complemented by ethereal xylophonic keys that dance underneath. With Pharrell by his side, Uzi launches into the album’s hardest hitting production. He comes out the other side a changed man-closing the song with “I’m doing fine now, I’m doing fine now / No I do not need nobody now”-and leaving the heartbreak behind him, before instantly transitioning to the album’s first collaborative effort. Producer WondaGurl lays a sickly carnivalesque array across the chorus, evocative of a warping mess of flashing lights as the production cycles from left to right (coinciding with Uzi’s apt “Not my first merry-go-round”). The album’s highlights centre around the middle of the track listing: on ‘For Real’, the 8-bit, laser show production crafts the perfect grooves for Uzi to channel his typical braggadocious self (“All of my diamonds for real / different colour like Pharrell’s”) before toning his ego down on ‘Feelings Mutual’, where Uzi enters an aural amusement park-a song that would feel like a welcome complement to the Safdie brother’s Good Time (2017). On LIR2, Uzi rollercoasters through feelings of dissociative euphoria and depression, often looping back to previously strung emotions with a focus on dealing with his breakup, his struggle for happiness following this, and the new, stronger Uzi that he now is. Abloh crafts a cover fitting given the album’s focus of unraveling of the darker side of Uzi, one that surfaced on ‘XO Tour Llif3′ (now with a new, nightmarish video directed by Abloh himself), and with his official debut, we are spiralled in a kaleidoscopic expulsion of Uzi’s leaned-out meanderings sincere and soulful trap dressed in digital pop beats. Additionally, he finds himself taped in by fashion designer and Kanye West collaborator, Virgil Abloh‘s OFF-WHITE tape, drawn straight from his industrial aesthetic and connoting a refined and polished, but ultimately off-kilter style that Uzi taps into sonically on the album.
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The central image is a photograph of him in the flesh, the reality of his image is brought to the fore his most emotive self, sprawled across an hour of revelatory music. Perhaps most telling is that Uzi is no longer represented by his usual cartoon character persona. The album cover sports the usual collage of bombastic imagery that Uzi’s covers are known for, except here, the art has been greyscaled purple swirls flaunting codeine overtones replaced by hard etched, white scribblings of song titles and tattoo-esque imagery. LIR2 finds him with a new sheen, a tidying of his messy and idiosyncratic aesthetic.
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He’s transformed into a superstar, tuned into radio waves across the globe and incited yet another meme (quickly becoming the way we engage with hip-hop/trap music - take Migos with ‘ Bad and Boujee ‘s viral success that sent them to the top of the charts, or Future with ‘ Mask Off‘ and his social media team’s capitalisation on flute memes for example) following that incredible stage-dive at Rolling Loud. In the time since we last heard music from Uzi, much has changed. Following what may seem to Uzi fans like a Blonde -length wait time given the amount of teasing he’s done, the long awaited sequel-turned-debut studio album has reached our ears, dropping us deep down into his hazy subconscious only to be pulled out with a string of triumphant, celebratory tracks in which he bounces back from the heartbreak that has continued to plague him.
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By Sam Harris | draining every last drop of ‘XO Tour Llif3 ‘s sleeper hit success, Lil Uzi Vert‘s Luv is Rage 2 has arrived after a surprise announcement on Instagram.