Lil Uzi Vert: Post Eternal Atake

  Well... it finally happened. The man finally dropped his long awaited sophomore album Eternal Atake. Although it was met with generally mixed reviews, I think I might like it the most of his discography thus far. Baby Pluto, Silly Watch, Celebration Station, Bigger Than Life, Chrome Heart Tags, Bust Me, Prices, Venetia, and That Way are some of his best songs he has ever released. I'll always remember where I was when the album dropped the morning of Friday March 6th 2020: I was playing Call of Duty while my phone charged behind me. After the game ended, I went to check what percent it was at. There was a Twitter notification. OH MY GOD ETERNAL ATAKE JUST DROPPED. In a panic, I threw on my headphones and pressed play on Baby Pluto. Listening to that intro for the first time may go down as the greatest music experience I'll ever have when it's all said and done. I called my friend, but I could barely get any words out. "It's out" I said. He understood. It was here. It was finally here. After all the Fridays, all the theories, all the "soon"s; he finally did it. The mad man dropped the fabled Eternal Atake. I listened to the whole 1 hour and 2 minutes and I was left speechless. Not only did it finally come out, but by god did I love it. Sure it didn't have Of Course or 1600 on it (2 of his best songs that were leaked), but this was some GOOD SHIT. Throughout the next week, Uzi teased a deluxe that would feature snippets that the fans have always wanted. They were clamoring for Kobe Rollie with Chief Keef, Myron, Lotus, Trap This Way, Come This Way, Me And The Moon Relate. Once again, Uzi delivered. All of those songs were on it, plus even more. Uzi was for the fans. Uzi was for the people. After that, it almost feels like we've been sent back in time to the Eternal Await. The dude has already teased at least 3 albums: Forever Young, Luv Is Rage 3, and The Real Uzi 2 (who the hell was asking for this?). Snippet after snippet has been played, but barely any solo songs have released. You have Sasuke (which I like to forget about), a decent amount of features (not solo), and the collab tape with Future (only one solo song, plus I really liked the project). So what has happened with Uzi since he dropped Eternal Atake? Some key factors include the supposed beef with Playboi Carti (which includes Sasuke), his features, teasing and snippets, the diamond, and a not so encouraging event.

Was Uzi beefing with Carti?

    Carti and Uzi used to be a dynamic duo. wokeuplikethis*, Shoota, Lookin, and Of Course We Ghetto Flowers showed the chemistry that they had together. Over time, it seemed like they had grown apart. In November of 2019 when Uzi was answering a lot of questions on Twitter, he responded to someone asking if he was still friends with Carti, replying with no they weren't, he decided to take a different route. Uzi also said on Twitter in March of 2020 that him and Carti were not beefing. He wanted to collab with him, but he supposedly couldn't find him (what?).  He also tweeted that Uzi would drop when HE drops, leaving many fans to speculate that the HE was Carti. Carti then dropped his first single @MEH on April 16, leading to Uzi tweeting out "Just Meh" and posting a picture that looked almost exactly like the artwork for Carti's single. That same day, Carti tweeted out ".MoNDaY" which lead fans to suspect that Carti would drop something on Monday. Would it finally be Whole Lotta Red? Not even 5 minutes later, Uzi tweeted out the same thing. It seemed to almost confirm that Uzi did mean Carti when he said HE. Like normal, Carti did not do shit, but Uzi released Sasuke on April 24th, where he used a comparable voice to Carti's patented baby voice. It was bad. That's all I will say about that song, moving on. Mere hours later, it seemed as if this supposed beef had been squashed:

Days later, we got a picture of Uzi and Carti in the studio!

Sir Cartier playing da Playstation 😱 😳

I can't find anything confirming it, but I believe I saw somewhere that the person who took this picture wasn't supposed to and was kicked out afterwards. But they were in the studio and you could see Uzi was recording! Possibly relating to this, a collab song between the two titled SRT leaked in the summer. It seemed as if the dynamic duo was finally back together. Then Whole Lotta Red released on Christmas (which I despised), and there was no Uzi collab. That same day, Iggy Azalea went off on Carti on twitter, claiming that he wasn't there for the birth of their child Onyx when it was a planned C-section. He supposedly "went to Philly to play the Playstation with Little Uzi". Azalea also claimed that Carti had cheated on her and even brought the girl to his album release party on Christmas, which he did not spend with his child and the child's mother. That's just about the end of the Carti-Uzi story, at least for now...

    So what do we take out of this saga? Probably something along the lines of we shouldn't care because it's two famous people and it has nothing to do with us or our lives. But I keep asking myself what the hell was that? It seemed out of nowhere that there was just a month or so where there was constant connection between the two. Was it fake and made up for hype? Uzi himself said no, tweeting out "Shit not fake we already linked and fought each other we good". Should we believe that? How many times did he say "soon" for Eternal Atake and it was NEVER true? Either way, my money is on Uzi winning that fight. He's got that small man syndrome going for him. Plus there have been multiple videos of Uzi boxing and he looks "decent" for a rapper who just does it for fun and laughs.

Features

    During the Eternal Await, Uzi was not allowed to release ANYTHING. He was supposed to be featured on Habits by NAV, but his label denied it (although that version has leaked). When he released New Patek in 2018, the hype for Eternal Atake skyrocketed. It seemed as if this was the lead single. This was a long awaited snippet, famous for the background in a Hotel and the crazy dance he performed. The cover art even had the Heaven's Gate key that Uzi had used for the current Eternal Atake cover art (which was eventually scrapped, most likely due to the complications brought forth by using Heaven's Gate design)! But, nothing happened. It wasn't until April of 2019 that we heard from Uzi when he released both Sanguine Paradise and That's A Rack. He had previously teased Sanguine Paradise at his Uzi And Friends concert that he held at Wells Fargo Center in December of 2018. It sounded amazing and once again felt as if Eternal Atake was getting closer. Unfortunately, the only reason these songs were officially released is because they were leaked (Uzi really needs a new password, so many of his songs get leaked). Then, right before Eternal Atake and after, Uzi was putting out feature after feature. It kinda felt like he was making up for all the time he missed. There was a lot of mid mixed in. My personal standouts are Commercial by Lil Baby, All Bad by Future (that was easily my song of the summer last year), Proud of You off of Slime Language 2 (IT FINALLY RELEASED), Relentless by Gunna, the Lucid Dreams Remix by Juice WRLD (THAT ALSO FINALLY RELEASED), Juggernaut by Tyler, The Creator (which seems like his verse may have been recorded around 2018 since it also features Pharrell and that is when they were working on a collab tape, but Tyler has at least confirmed that it wasn't a scrapped song from that), and Teenage Dream 2 by Kidd G (Uzi for some reason gave a random country kid a fire verse, but bigger features it seemed like he just phoned them in). Overall, Uzi has been very inconsistent since EA. Not only is it not as good as his other stuff, but it's coming out at an insane rate, which I will still take over hearing nothing from him. As long as his next album is as good as some of the stuff he is previewing...

Teasing and Snippets

    It wouldn't be Uzi without him teasing songs that fans will continue to fight over for years to come. He's done a lot of previewing, mostly through IG live. In December, he previewed more than 20 songs on just one live. There were some good ones, some mid ones, some not so great, but Uzi was back in the studio and making more music, which was a positive. Here are some of my favorite snippets of his since Eternal Atake dropped:

Movie

    The first real preview after the forehead diamond. This music video was filmed by Qasquiat, who also did the Free Uzi music video. Not only is the music video fire, but this song sounds great, too. I never understood the hate for the "aye" adlibs, and I think they fit just fine in here. The flow is superb and the lyrics are even pretty good for an Uzi song. I'm hoping this one releases with the video, which has almost 12 million views since the beginning of March for just a music video snippet that was not officially released.

It's Over

    This has the potential to not only be one of Uzi's best songs, but even one of the best songs I've ever heard. I believe this is the one that could finally top XO Tour Llif3, not in popularity and impact of course, but just overall enjoyment. Uzi is truly a rockstar at heart. Slayerr with TM88, Wasted, and the Lucid Dreams Remix by Juice WRLD are examples of how Uzi is at his best when taking this sort of approach. I'd like to see Uzi branch off more into this type of genre, and it's seen more with the next snippet...

Party With The Demons

    Many fans have speculated that this could possibly be the song that Uzi was talking about that he feels could be bigger than XO Tour Llif3. He said he wouldn't ever preview that song, and it seems as if this video was recorded almost secretly. Nothing will ever meet the amount of popularity and influence that XO Tour Llif3 had, so I'm not gonna agree with Uzi on this one. That being said, I love the sound of this one. Like I said with It's Over, Uzi is at his best when he sounds like a rockstar, and that's clear in this snippet. I feel like this song won't ever be released or previewed again, but I hope I am wrong.

Go/Sanguine Paradise 2

    One problem I've had with the recent snippets is that Uzi is just making sequels, using the same flow, similar beats, etc. This, Finessin Hearts 2, Super Saiyan 2, Mr. Trending Topic (which sounds like Erase Your Social), they just sound way too similar and almost lazy. I still really like Go, which has been labeled Sanguine Paradise 2. I loved that beat (stop the Brandon Finessin hate) and I think this is different enough and overall seems to be a great song. Another one of the songs I don't think will ever release, but I'd like to hear it fully mixed and mastered, which will unfortunately have to be a leak most likely.

Mr. Trending Topic

    Like I said prior, this song sounds very similar to Erase Your Social and for good reason: Uzi is finally linking back up with Don Cannon after the debacle with him supposedly not allowing Uzi to release. Very similar beat, flow, and even topic, but that isn't ALWAYS a bad thing. Erase Your Social was a great song with a great vibe, so a similar styled song isn't a bad idea. The rest of the song just needs to be as good as what we've heard thus far.

The Forehead Diamond

    

    Look I get how horrible of an idea this is. $24 million to put a diamond in your forehead? That's a huge waste of money, honestly the definition of a waste of money. But in my opinion... it doesn't look that bad. 

Uzi kinda looking cute doe 😳

    This garnered a lot of talk throughout social media, trending just about everywhere for all the wrong reasons. But hey, any publicity is good publicity. I think it was a bad move for him to not release any music. He was trending everywhere and everyone was talking about him and how he looked like Vision (meme got old after one second). Uzi said he could possibly die if he didn't take out the diamond correctly, which just sounds like total cap to me.

This just does not look real, but what do I know?

    Recently, he hasn't really been wearing it a lot. Why would you pay that much to barely use it? Uzi is definitely an interesting dude, 100% a kid at heart, but this was just simply a BAD idea.

Chris Brown 2.0?

    Recently, there have been reports that Uzi got in a fight with his ex-girlfriend Brittany Byrd. One of the stories states that Uzi and his team pulled up on her at a cafe with Saint JHN (him and Brittany were supposedly just talking business). Uzi, among other things, flashed a gun at Saint JHN and ended up punching Brittany, leading to her ending up in the hospital. At this point, I can only hope that this is not the true story, but it certainly isn't looking good so far. There have been inconsistencies throughout, with there being multiple different stories about what has happened. Did Uzi ever go after Saint JHN? Did he ever actually punch Brittany? Without concrete evidence, we can't know for certain. She later tweeted out this, which just seems really odd to me, almost as if she's trying really hard to get attention and people on her side:

    For now, I'm just going to hope what actually happened is not as bad as it has been made out to be, but there really isn't a point where anything that happened could be ok. 

Where To Now?

    Dude I don't know my name's not Symere Woods. Hopefully some music and no jail time (of course if it is as bad as it seems so far then of course he should probably serve some time or something).