Last year, SoundCloud-era rap icon Lil Uzi Vert released a hit song called "I Just Wanna Rock" that, ironically, didn't really rock, but rather jumped on the bass-heavy Jersey Club trend that's been dominating hip-hop over the last year. However, on his new songs, Uzi is indeed rocking.
Today (June 30th), the Philly rapper has released his long-awaited new album Pink Tape, his first full-length since 2020's wildly popular Eternal Atake, and metal makes a big appearance on three of the 23-song album's cuts.
Most notably, Uzi bangs out a bonkers, auto-tune-filled cover of System of a Down's Toxicity smash "Chop Suey!" It'd be a bit of a stretch to call this a remix and not a genuine cover, since Uzi doesn't just sample a piece of it to rap over, but basically takes the whole meat of the song and throws his vocals atop to give it his own stargazing spin.
Later on the record there's a song called "Werewolf" featuring U.K. metalcore visionaries Bring Me the Horizon, which coincidentally sounds a lot like Glassjaw, the band Uzi recently collaborated with on BMTH's most recent single "AmEN!"
And the final track on the opus features Japanese alt-metal experimentalists Babymetal, who lend their dazzling vocals and extreme instrumentation to Uzi's bizarre, neon rap paradise. Listen to all three unexpected metal tracks above and below via YouTube.
Uzi's flirtation with metal should come as no surprise. Of all his peers who pushed aggressive, mosh-pit-starting hip-hop into the mainstream over the last half-decade (Travis Scott, Playboi Carti, xxxtentacion), the "XO Tour Lif3" rapper seems to be the most legit metalhead, having moshed "harder than anyone" in a Lorna Shore pit back in 2018.
