Album Review - Lil Uzi Vert: Pink Tape

STRONG 5/10

Lil Uzi Vert took nearly 3 years to drop Pink Tape since their last solo album. (Photo courtesy of People)

Have you ever received a gift from someone and it’s exactly what you wanted, but they also give you more than you wanted, and so now you feel an obligation to show you care about each aspect equally? That is sort of what it feels like to be a recipient of Lil Uzi Vert’s Pink Tape. Pink Tape was similarly as anticipated as Uzi’s previous solo effort, Eternal Atake (2020), and the Philadelphia rapper made sure to surround it’s rollout with the same ambiguity as they did a few years ago. Rumors of a long-awaited reunion with former collaborator Playboi Carti, as well as a potential feature from Yeat, instigated high expectations the moment the LP’s release date was announced. While neither artist appeared on the final product, those who did seemingly left Uzi to fend for themselves.

Pink Tape’s feature list has an extreme range of genres from hip-hop juggernaut Travis Scott to metal band Bring Me the Horizon. Unfortunately, every single track where Uzi calls for creative backup on this unwieldy 26-song album falls criminally short. Scott is given the most prototypical “Travis Scott type beat” on “Aye”, but his performance is as uninspiring as the song’s title. Scott lazily glides over the instrumental and forces cultural innuendos into his verse with bars like “Hit her, make her do the griddy.” Bring Me the Horizon tries their best to serve Uzi the outline for a harmless heavy-rock track, but Uzi absolutely dismantles this attempt with their muffled vocals on “Werewolf.” Uzi tries to do their best nu-metal impression on it as well, but again, this collaboration feels superfluous in comparison to what we normally expect, and predominantly receive, in terms of stylistic approach throughout Pink Tape. The core verses of “Endless Fashion” with Nicki Minaj don’t wholly lack substance, but the chorus’ interpolation of Eiffel 65’s “Blue (Da Ba Dee)” is painfully tacky and is the pinnacle of an unfavorable trend of references and carbon-copying melodies that Uzi gains an affinity for throughout the tracklist.

“CS” is a cover of System of a Down’s “Chop Suey”, a nu-metal classic that Uzi absolutely butchers with their voice-control and pales in comparison to the original rendition (the auto-tune doesn’t help in a track that is supposed to be as raw as possible). Uzi continuously finds themselves floating between half-baked radical experimentation and paying unnecessary homage to other artists. This continues with “Mama, I’m Sorry”, which has verses that seem awfully reminiscent of Luv Is Rage 2’s “Dark Queen”, but sporadic bridges that interpolate pieces from songs like Chief Keef’s “Hate Bein’ Sober” and Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used To Know” (?). Once you finally cut out all the excess fat from the Pink Tape’s hearty tracklist, the sonic gems begin to reveal themselves.

“Flooded The Face” is a high-energy introduction to the Pink Tape; it’s stuffed to the brim with charisma and a hunger that has been missing from a lot of Uzi tracks in recent years. It’s successor, “Suicide Doors”, is an aggressive statement piece that not only mocks the absurdity of those who criticize Uzi for their aesthetic flamboyance, but features an effective example of stylistic inspiration out of the track’s clear alignment with Playboi Carti’s Whole Lotta Red (2020), as well as rage music in general. This is further apparent on “x2”, which is produced by a member of Carti’s Opium music label, Ken Carson. Although tracks like “x2” and “Died and Came Back” sound like they could have easily been featured on Uzi’s last couple of albums, they contain enough bouncy exuberance to become highlights on this 2023 effort. The latter of which features assumably pointed lyrics at rapper Roddy Rich, who has claimed to have had sexual relations with Uzi’s current girlfriend, and fellow rapper, JT of the City Girls. Uzi patronizes Roddy with lyrics like “Your voice don’t sound the same, get your range back”, which is likely alluding to the fact that Roddy’s popularity has experienced a rapid decline from the heights of his acclaimed and wildly successful Please Excuse Me for Being Antisocial (2019).

“I Gotta” is a smooth and uplifting attempt by Uzi to continue on with flaunting their immeasurable success that has led up to this point. “Nakamura” might be the best track on the album with its intense sampling of WWE wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura’s theme song that culminates in an anthemic product of blood-pumping auto-tuned harmonies and relentless bars. Additionally, “Days Come and Go” is easily the most substantively dense track on the album, where Uzi shows vulnerability with aspects of their life such as their awareness of how famous they truly are, as well as their relationship with their father and their growing reluctance to express emotions as they become more publicly scrutinized.

Pink Tape is a monstrosity in the most poignant sense of the word. It’s a bloated mess of tracks that will either be forgotten in the pantheon of Uzi’s discography, or will be incessantly remembered for better or worse. Aside from the actual quality of the music itself, the tracklist is incoherently sequenced, with the transition from “Werewolf” to “Pluto to Mars” fully encapsulating how bizarre the sonic breadth of the Pink Tape can be. It’s never a confidence-inducing experience to be told to play it a bit safer on a work of imagination, but Uzi simply needed to be more concise. Uzi’s creativity and ambition is not up for debate on the Pink Tape, but their final execution certainly is.