#Lil uzi xo tour life lyrics behind the movie

This oddball stance animates Uzi’s music, making it sound, indeed, otherworldly at times. As for why, he surmises: “I’m not normal.” In a 2017 FADER cover story, he details the first and only job he had as a stocker for a now-defunct grocery store where he lasted all of four days. The notion that he’s out of place - not just in his industry but on the planet, as a human - is a recurring theme in his interviews and his songs. Atlanta is down south, the club.” Uzi annexes the spirit of both locales in his music, often deceptively underselling the former as he leans into the latter. “So the difference is, down there they’re actually trying to make songs. Everybody here can rap,” Uzi explained to Spin. “In Philly it’s like, this is really the East Coast. If the City of Brotherly Love is known for its lyrically dexterous and roughneck rhymers, then the A is home to, well, the outcasts. “U.Z.I.” soon captured the attention of Don Cannon, who, along with DJ Drama (both Philly natives themselves), signed the budding rapper to their Generation Now imprint and relocated him to Atlanta.

#Lil uzi xo tour life lyrics behind the movie

Built on muddy 808s and metallic synths that would be well-suited to a horror movie score, it belied what he could do with cadence but suggested a multitude of possibilities for his voice. He continued to sharpen his skills, eventually releasing a song called “U.Z.I.” in 2014. The group was short-lived, but Uzi was committed. ) A high school friend piqued a bit of interest after recording a freestyle over Chris Brown’s “Look At Me Now” beat, and Uzi - then going by the stagename Sealab Vertical - decided he needed to get in on it too, forming a trio with that same friend and another acquaintance called Steaktown. (“I’m an attention seeker, still ’til this day” he admitted in an early interview with XXL. It’s a story that’s been told many times by now, the kid who didn’t have rap aspirations in the beginning but nevertheless wanted all eyes on him. It exists now somewhere in between cult favorite and certified classic.īorn Symere Woods, Uzi grew up in North Philadelphia.

The era that engendered the kaleidoscopic sound of the mixtape, his second commercial release, was ill-equipped to account for its impact. That change wouldn’t come until October, allowing some of Uzi’s most beloved songs to rack up millions of plays that counted for little outside of the intimate, SoundCloud-facilitated relationship between an artist and his loyal fans. The World in April of that year, SoundCloud streams didn't yet count toward RIAA certification nor the Billboard charts, which, historically, have been held as a reputable (albeit unreliable) measure of achievement.

Though he was a creative nucleus at the center of an especially fecund moment in modern music, had-to-be-there nostalgia remains the best proof of his eminence. It was a time of inspired lawlessness in which a rapper like Lil Uzi Vert could feed an insatiable audience a steady diet of songs and snippets as he evolved and refined his sound in real time. For its part, the music industry was woefully unprepared, and in some cases unwilling, to accommodate a prolific pool of talent disinterested in playing by its rules. Listeners who favored a more traditionalist approach to rap decried this new generation’s perceived lack of tact, morals or skill - to be sure, a perspective rooted in revisionist characterizations of the past, nevermind the fact that many of the artists in question considered themselves rockstars anyway. SoundCloud granted artists the ability to share their music and find both open ears and kindred community, no label budget necessary fans would decide who rose to the top.Īs consumer power grew, so too did the resentment. Turbulent sociopolitics of the broader world aside, back then, the music industry was undergoing a significant shift, prompted by a merry band of misfits who would come to be grouped under the umbrella term “SoundCloud rap.” The style encompassed lo-fi noise rap, histrionic emo rap, drug-addled cloud rap and combinations thereof that took hold across the platform. In internet time, 2016 might as well be forever ago.