Pink Tape

*Pink Tape* feels like the first time we’ve heard everything Lil Uzi Vert can be in one place. Club music (“Just Wanna Rock”) and trap metal (“Suicide Doors,” “Werewolf”), pop hybrids (“Pluto to Mars,” the Nicki Minaj-featuring “Endless Fashion”) and pure menace (“Aye,” “Fire Alarm”). The melodies pour out of them like water (“x2,” “Mama, I’m Sorry”) and their cadence, flow, and energy can be astonishing—they make rapping sound like a physical feat (“Flooded the Face”). Like *Eternal Atake*, the prospect of taking it all in at once can seem totally overwhelming, but in a way, that’s the point: While they can be exacting about details (some of these tracks have been under construction since 2017), the experience of their music is like standing in a big bath of neon light—a cumulative approach that puts them in a growing tradition of mood-first rappers like Future and Young Thug. And while they’ve got some eccentricities, they’re not half as weird as hip-hop’s conservative wing might have you think. Do they think big? Yeah. Listen broadly? That, too. They just want to cram all the stuff they love into one place no matter how little it seems to fit together, from *Dragon Ball Z* to Marilyn Manson to jewelers most civilians have never heard of. Who are you to yuck their yum?

The Philadelphia rapper delivers a bloated and messy new album, struggling to live up to their reputation for imaginative, genre-blending adventures.

Philly rapper Lil Uzi Vert was never stylistically timid, experimenting with genre boundaries as early as their 2017 emo/rap-dabbling effort Luv Is Rage 2.

There’s no one out there like Lil Uzi Vert. Nobody can command such a huge audience, while also delivering such left-field, often scorchingly personal

Lil Uzi Vert's ‘Pink Tape’ has a consistent upbeat vitality that never allows things to veer too far in one direction or another.