Not much has been heard from the new age rockstar Lil Uzi Vert since his mega hit XO TOUR Lif3 so it was a surprise when Uzi dropped a surprise EP on Sept. 22 titled What Is This?
This EP came out a few days after Uzi’s single “New Patek”, which was greeted with mixed reviews. Uzi decided to release the project under his real name, Symere Woods, on a Saturday, which adds to its uniqueness considering new projects are typically released on Fridays. The project will also drop on Spotify in the near future.
The project itself is peculiar. It was released before his next announced studio album titled Eternal Atake. It consists of eight tracks, all of which run between two to four minutes.
The project starts off with a dark yet smooth intro titled “VERT”. The track is glossed in low 808’s and a synth piano rests over by Uzi’s vocals, which were lower than usual and had way less autotune than he usually provides in a song. It was a breath of fresh air, as if the artist was letting his fans know that he had transformed his sound and wanted them to realize it. The song seemed to create a vibe that would continue throughout the album, and it did.
His next five songs were pretty good and sounded the same as his strong intro, but once it got to the seventh song in the project, the sound overstayed its welcome and it had become monotonous. What was once excitement and anticipation slowly became disappointment because Uzi Vert released a whole bunch of songs that sounded like everyone else. There was no creativity.
This project does show an interesting perspective on trap music: it is not evolving. Rap music slowly, but surely, has become mainstream music’s number one genre and mumble rap is at the heart of it. Everyday people are making millions from rapping incomprehensible lyrics over heavy 808 beats, which is not bad, but the problem comes when the wave hits its peak. Pop music, no matter what genre it has used over the decades, has always overplayed itself.
It would be irresponsible to blame this just on the artist, listeners must take the blame as well because we keep listening to it. The state of trap music is not a bad thing, but it will be if copies of the same sounds are produced.
Music and its genres have always evolved in order to survive and if something doesn’t, then it will die off. Trap music and mumble-rap has brought the world many lovable artist, and even though it suffers from originality, it does not mean that is has not and still can produce great artist, but listeners must demand new sounds to be introduced. They must demand an evolution of the genre.
