Lil Uzi Vert is having an identity crisis. Their last year or so has been spent just spinning the wheel and praying they land on a jackpot. In 2023, there was Pink Tape, an album I sometimes mistake as a false memory implant, like Arnold’s marriage in Total Recall. But no, Uzi really sang over Deftones-ish nu-metal and rapped on a flip of Shinsuke Nakamura’s WWE theme song and did a dumpster fire cover of System of a Down’s “Chop Suey!” That experiment ultimately fell flat but the project has its moments—the anguished scream at the beginning of “Spin Again”; the vulnerability of “Rehab.” There was also the long-teased mixtape Barter 16Uzi’s purported all-out Young Thug cosplay, which was supposedly scrapped (I still kind of want to hear the full thing). Now, with Eternal Atake 2, Uzi’s next spin lands on a retreat into their own past, and a whole lot of fan service.
In a recent sit-down with ComplexUzi revealed the fan reactions they prefer their music to get: “50/50…I don’t like when everyone says it’s good. I feel like it’s going to die out fast.” Then, on Eternal Atake 2’s “Goddard Song”—named after their robot dog, of course—the track opens with a clip from a decade-old Kitty interview where she tries to brush the online critics off by saying, “If you put it on the internet, someone’s gonna hate it, like, no matter what…But it’s fine, like, I get to have fun…So I don’t care, they’re on the internet, doesn’t matter.” Uzi’s message seems to be: They definitely do not care at all if you hate EA2. Actually, you’re supposed to hate it. This seems to be their self-defense mode after Pink Tape was shit on even by the diehards in their subredditbecause if you listen to EA2 it seems like the goal isn’t for the album to be divisive or even loved—just for it not to be hated.
All the boxes are checked. Box 1: For the fans incredibly nostalgic for the moody melodies of the LUV Is Rage series. On the intro “We Good,” which nicely interpolates a sample of Alvvays’ “Very Online Guy,” Uzi’s hybrid of pop-punk shrieks and zigzagging flows aim to bring you back to the days of “XO Tour Lif3.” Except it’s not nearly as heartfelt as their older songs, which managed to be melancholic and euphoric at the same time. It feels copy and pasted from that era, only now they’re rapping about Galaxy Gas. “The Rush”—with an intro from the Nickelodeon boy band Big Time Rush that sounds like it was purchased on Cameo—fits the criteria, too, as Uzi lifelessly runs through all their signature ad-libs (“Huh?”,“Yeah!”) like an old wrestler who pops up at SummerSlam to say their catchphrase.
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