Lil Uzi Vert

Lil Uzi Vert told us up front, in their intro to Playboi Carti’s “Wokeuplikethis*”: “I’m a rock star.” The metaphor wasn’t about dominance so much as it was about flamboyance, for Uzi as a purse-carrying, post-Kanye MC raised on anime and Marilyn Manson, whose indifference towards hip-hop orthodoxy made them a punk to some and a hero to more.

Where previous generations of rappers leveraged influence through the boardroom (JAY-Z: “I’m not a businessman/I’m a business, man”), Uzi represents a generation fluent in fashion and social media, not just a recording artist but a kind of creative director whose personality and sense of world-building comes through almost as loudly as the music.

That they could turn a line as bleak as “Push me to the edge/All my friends are dead” (“XO TOUR Llif3”) into a sing-along only made them more vital—here was a person feeling the pain and packaging it in style.