push me album art lil uzi vert album cover

“X” is one of the most tuneful offerings on Uzi’s full-length debut Luv Is Rage 2, a thicket of chart-climbing Auto-Tunes that the man born Symere Woods often denies is rap at all. That is, 23-year-old 2017 VMP Lil Uzi Vert is perpetuating the word “ho” in the public lexicon, as in the overcompensating “Watch out boys, I might grab your ho” climaxing an otherwise entrancingly pretty track that’s trapped in an awfully relatable struggle: “I don’t want my ex/ Wake up to a text/ I’m not trying to flex.”

It informs emo, too, and don’t think those stealthbrags interwoven with Drake, Future, and their young new cohorts’ much-ballyhooed sensitivity isn’t still a defining factor. Anyone with a brain knows hip-hop has always had far more to offer than toxic masculinity, but anyone with a heart admits toxic masculinity has unfortunately come to inform the outsider perception of rap for the greater part of its existence. Did you really think mainstream rap could escape emo? This is a realm where it was considered some kind of philosophical landmark when it was revealed that Rick Ross could continue to have a successful career after it was discovered the “real Noriega” didn’t in fact owe him a hundred favors because he was a corrections officer in his previous life rather than a Miami drug kingpin.

Push me album art lil uzi vert album cover