‘It is Uzi’s World. We simply live in it.’

You may have heard me say this in the hallways and for good reason. On Friday, March 6th, Philadelphia rapper Lil Uzi Vert’s highly anticipated sophomore studio album was dropped on Spotify, Soundcloud, and Apple Music. The 16 song album is reportedly the ‘first half’ of the album; Uzi tweeted that he would be “back wit a deluxe”, meaning that a deluxe album will be out soon. In the meantime, 25-year-old Symere Woods (aka Uzi) is reveling in the fame and popularity of the album.

While there are several contributing factors to why the album is anticipated by many, the main one is the fact that the album was held up due to the leaking of several songs by his former label, Generation Now. The producers in that group would regularly leak snippets and, sometimes, full songs to the public before the release of Eternal Atake. This forced the Philly native rapper to delay the release of the album several times to record new songs and continue feuding with his own label. Eventually, Uzi cut ties with Generation Now and on March 27th, 2019, it was announced that Uzi had signed with Roc Nation.

There was also a bit of confusion regarding what singles would be a part of the album. It was originally thought that the album would be released way earlier than the March 6th, 2020 date when Uzi released ‘New Patek’ on September 18th, 2018. There was hype around the album for a long time before the first snippets were leaked and the album was delayed. Nearly two weeks after signing with Roc Nation, Uzi dropped two more singles: Sanguine Paradise and That’s a Rack. More speculation and hype for the release of Eternal Atake. December 12th, however, saw the release of the first actual single off the album: Futsal Shuffle 2020. This sparked a national dance craze and added more hype to the release of Eternal Atake. Sunday, March 1st saw the release of the second single, That Way, and it was announced that the album would be released on March 13th. But, as we all know, it was released a week earlier.

The actual album is split into three parts for Uzi’s three different rap personalities. Tracks 1-6 is titled ‘Baby Pluto’, 7-12 is titled ‘Renji’, and 13-18 is titled ‘Lil Uzi Vert’. The opening track, titled Baby Pluto, starts off with a futuristic voice that says ‘Welcome to Eternal Atake’ followed by ‘nǐ zhǔnbèi hǎole ma?’, which translates to ‘Are you ready?’ in Mandarin. There are plenty of very good songs, including Silly Watch, Chrome Heart Tags, and Bust Me. The biggest song on it, arguably, is titled P2 and is the sequel to Uzi’s hit, XO Tour Llif3. Produced by the same producer, TM88, he commented on the song saying, “I took the drums [from the first song] and put a new melody over it. I wanted the new melody to kind of like, speak to people when they hear it and put them in a trance”. Either way, whether you’re a casual fan or a diehard Uzi lover, this album did not disappoint and certainly lived up to its hype.