Lil Uzi Vert Vs. The World

The story of hip-hop in the 2010s is a story of fragmentation and reassembly—regional, local, and micro scenes splintering again and again until they reach their most specific endpoint, only to be surveyed by other rappers and synthesized into styles that feel wholly new. Few artists are better avatars for this phenomenon than Lil Uzi Vert. Raised in Philadelphia on the Southern hip-hop that had come to dominate radio and television during his youth (with plenty of rock records thrown into the equation), Uzi developed a sound that strayed from Northeastern hyperformalism but kept him more tethered to a 4/4 grid than contemporaries like Young Thug. It’s perhaps fitting, then, that Uzi was brought into the major label fold by Don Cannon, the legendary producer and mixtape DJ from Atlanta whose offices were raided, in 2007, as part of a federal investigation into music piracy—a symbol of the contentious, uncertain state the music industry was in at the dawn of the iPod age. Uzi kept that disruptive streak without ever appearing beholden to what had come before. Issued when he was only 21, Lil Uzi Vert vs. The World captures the rapper at his most assured, bringing massive beats like “Money Longer” to heel, making even the most unwieldy sounds seem natural canvases for his swaggering worldview. Just a few months after Lil Uzi Vert vs. The World was released, Uzi secured a spot on the 2016 edition of XXL’s coveted Freshmen cover, identifying him as one of hip-hop’s key emerging talents. “Money Longer” became nearly inescapable in many corners of the rap world, and “You Was Right” served as proof of concept for Uzi’s ability to twist private confessions into rallying cries. The brief project—its nine songs clock in just under 34 minutes—contains enough structural ideas and emotional baggage to become totalizing, as Uzi himself soon would be.