Symere Woods, aka Lil Uzi Vert, went from a local kid to superstar in no time.
Then he became a fashion icon, signature dance creator, junk food sommelier, and oh yeah,
also a rapper.
This is the untold truth of Lil Uzi Vert.
What's in a name?
Symere Woods earned his stage name on the streets of Philadelphia, where the speed of
his raps evoked comparisons to rapid-fire weaponry.
Lil Uzi Vert confirmed his name's origins in an interview with Vibe in 2016, saying,
"Some guy was just like 'you rap fast, man.
Like a little machine gun' and from that moment I was Lil Uzi."
Okay, so that covers the first part, but...what about the "Vert?"
Well, the rapper once offered an explanation for that, and it turns out, the meaning isn't
that hard to guess.
Quoted by Rolling Stone, Lil Uzi Vert said,
"Vert is, like, straight to the top, like a vertical leap."
Though a bit of a stretch, some commentators have floated the notion that the rapper's
name as a whole is something of a homophone, if you say Lil Uzi Vert quickly, it can sound
like "Lucifer."
And while it definitely doesn't seem intentional, it is a neat coincidence, one the rapper has
helped cultivate with occasional references to Satanism and the occult, like his Luv is
Rage 2 track "444 + 222".
Lil Uzi fashion
Listen to any Lil Uzi Vert song and within a few bars, you'll notice that he's probably
bragging about his expensive clothes.
Even early in his career, Lil Uzi Vert loved to talk about fashion.
In a 2016 video interview for Vibe, the rapper just started describing his outfit, emphasizing
that he's always going to be a fashion-focused figure, with ambitions to design clothes of
his own one day.
"This is Yeezy, this is 424, this is Margiela, this is Helmut Lang…Zubiez..."
As his fame grew, so did Lil Uzi Vert's passion for fashion.
Speaking with GQ, he talked about his impulsive shopping habits.
He confessed that he has a habit of buying clothes on a reckless whim, saying
"I never try on [things].
If I can't fit in it, I just give it away.
In the store, if I try on [some clothes] and I'm too small, I'll be upset, bro!
I just gotta take it."
Compiling outfits seems to give the rapper inspiration and he definitely takes fashion
seriously.
He's even expressed the notion that he puts more work into his look than he does into
his music, calling music effortless by comparison.
Clothes, it appears, take a little bit more care.
It probably helps that Uzi and Virgil Abloh, the current Louis Vuitton creative director,
have been friends since before Abloh secured his high-profile gig.
Lil Uzi Vert lovingly referred to him as a "fashionably inclined uncle."
Interviewed by GQ, Abloh had praises for the rapper, saying,
"Lil Uzi isn't even human.
He is another level of a creative being.
To me he is an Impressionist painter replacing pigments with ready-made brands and clothes."
Wide-ranging influences
From an early age, Lil Uzi Vert played in the music scene, telling Narduwar that he
played the cornet first before moving on to the trumpet.
Speaking with Rolling Stone, Lil Uzi Vert talked about other musicians that inspired
him when he was younger, from Southern rappers like the Ying Yang Twins and Mike Jones to
more familiar Philly artists like Beanie Sigel.
But it wasn't just rappers that inspired Uzi's style.
The magazine also noted that Lil Uzi Vert's sound was also influenced by rock and emo
bands like Flyleaf, Paramore, and My Chemical Romance.
The influences have shown up in his own original tunes, whether it's rock and roll, Marilyn
Manson, or something more surprising.
He told Rolling Stone,
"I just take rock songs and mix it with hip-hop and a little bit of R&B."
And don't forget about Backstreet Boys.
Lil Uzi Vert released the single "That Way," which reinterprets the iconic '90s hit "I
Want It That Way."
Producer Supah Mario, who put together the song's beat, said in an interview with Splice
that the boy band choice completely surprised him.
"How does Uzi find a way to use Backstreet Boys on a record?"
When he finally heard the song with vocals, though, he had to admit that they might have
a hit on their hands.
"Once I heard it, which was literally the day before it came out, it's the first time
I'm actually hearing lyrics on this beat, I was like 'Oh, yeah, this might be a hit.'"
Early retirement?
At the start of 2019, at seemingly the peak of his career, Lil Uzi Vert dropped everything
and announced an abrupt retirement from the music scene.
The rapper posted on his Instagram story,
"I wanna take the time out to say I thank each and every one of my supporters but I'm
done with music I deleted everything I wanna be normal...I wanna wake up in 2013."
Fans were understandably shocked.
Two months later, Lil Uzi Vert resurfaced on Instagram Live with unheard music.
But it turns out the tune was just an unreleased cut from early in his career.
According to XXL, the singer reiterated that he was still retired, saying,
"I don't music no more but y'all can have this old stuff."
Only a few weeks later, XXL reported that Lil Uzi Vert was back in the studio and actually
signed to one of the biggest record labels in the business, Jay-Z's lucrative Roc Nation.
It was a fitting arrangement for the moment, considering that the label executive himself
has been known to retire and unretire from music in the past.
With Lil Uzi Vert returning with not one, but two new albums in early 2020, When GQ
asked why the rapper briefly quit music, he responded, "I dunno, just how I felt.
That's all.
I just wanted to be more normal."
Making moves
Everyone knows Lil Uzi Vert can rap, but did you ever think of him as a dancer?
Although he never shied away from dancing, things didn't really heat up for him on that
front until the end of 2018, when Uzi and Dallas rapper 10k.Caash showed off their moves
in an Instagram post by the young Texan.
The two were performing "The Woah," a dance which went from a regional thing to a widespread
craze, with a wide variety of celebs recording viral videos of themselves hitting the moves.
Lil Uzi Vert periodically posted other videos of him dancing to social media, sometimes
just his feet.
Though seemingly cryptic at first, this all led up to Lil Uzi Vert making his very own
dance move.
In 2020, the rapper released his song "Futsal Shuffle 2020" with an accompanying music video.
With his song in the background, Lil Uzi Vert shows off his impressive footwork and teaches
the rest of the world how to replicate the sequence.
Have you tried learning it?
Making an iconic single
2017 was a great year for Lil Uzi Vert on the Billboard charts.
He and Migos topped the Hot 100 list for their hit "Bad and Boujee."
His album Luv Is Rage 2 topped the Billboard 200, and his iconic song "XO TOUR Llif3" reached
number seven on the Hot 100.
The song not only performed well on the charts but also received glowing critical reviews.
In the words of The New York Times' Joe Coscarelli, "It doesn't get better."
The song's unlikely rise to the top started when Uzi lost two phones full of unreleased
material while stage diving.
Instead of waiting for the unreleased tracks to show up on the internet, he just went ahead
and released it all himself, XO TOUR Llif3 included.
Pitchfork praised the impact of the song on the music industry, and named it the number
ten best song of the 2010s.
As far as the song's construction goes, Pitchfork noted that the producer behind the track,
TM88, recorded the song with not much more than a Beats Pill and an old computer, helping
contribute to the song's DIY aesthetic.
Motivation for the music
Despite all the fame and critical success, Lil Uzi Vert is still a young rap star with
a pretty humble goal for his career.
In a 2015 profile by XXL, the then-up-and-coming rapper admitted,
"I'm not going to sit here and be like I want to win a Grammy or whatever; if that comes,
that's awesome.
But I just want to be successful and provide for my whole family and get my family out
the hood."
Similarly, in a 2019 interview with GQ, he said
"I like making music, and I like making people happy, but the music is whatever, bro."
So, why does he continue to pump out songs and records?
According to him,
"I really do it just to make my family happy.
Like, it's just something for my family to talk about."
That same year, he posted on Twitter about his grandma who had been in the hospital for
months.
Crediting her with having raised him up from childhood, he wrote,
"I love my grandma more than Clothes."
Praise for peers
Lil Uzi Vert has professed his admiration for Dej Loaf, the Detroit rapper best known
for her song "Try Me."
Speaking with XXL, Lil Uzi Vert confessed,
"I'm in love with Dej Loaf.
I got a whole song dedicated to her basically and she heard it."
The song in question is fittingly called "Dej Loaf," which he released on SoundCloud in
2015, helping introduce the world to his signature flow.
It seems Lil Uzi Vert may not have this same level of admiration for all female musicians.
Though she seemed to laugh the whole thing off, singer Grimes said the rapper totally
neglected her, which she spoke about to Zane Lowe on his Beats 1 radio show.
"He asked me to produce an EP for him once, and then I sent him the WeTransfer and he
never downloaded it.
And I was like, 'Dude, I spent two weeks on this.'"
The fuel that keeps him going
For an interview focused around Lil Uzi Vert's obsession with fashion, the rapper inadvertently
revealed his love of particular comfort foods.
As GQ described, during a photoshoot in a Brooklyn grocery store, Lil Uzi Vert stopped
everything when a special something caught his eye: Entenmann's Little Bites 'Party Cakes'
flavor muffins.
"It's kinda hard to find them sometimes.
Sometimes they're in season, sometimes they're not."
The article went on to describe a snack spree, with Uzi filling up a bodyguard's basket with
everything from cheap pound cakes to pizza-flavored Goldfish.
"What's your favorite Pop Tart flavor?"
"Blueberry, but I like cinnamon too."
How much is he worth?
In 2018, Forbes estimated Lil Uzi Vert's net worth at $19.5 million, citing his more than
3.5 billion streams over the year as evidence for their assessment.
But aside from streams, Uzi also became one of the highest grossing acts in hip-hop for
the year because of touring.
With two new albums out at the start of 2020, Eternal Atake and Lil Uzi Vert vs the World
2, the rapper is likely to end up stacking even more money from streaming earnings.
And how does he spend his cash?
Lil Uzi Vert makes it clear in most of his songs how much money he makes and how he loves
to burn through it.
Predictably, he buys expensive clothes and accessories.
For example, Lil Uzi Vert talked in a GQ video about his favorite blanket, a $1000 item from
Y/Project.
"If it's nice, I'll buy anything."
In a feature story for GQ, the rapper said his dream purchase is a new Bugatti supercar
of his own.
Although he admitted that the maintenance costs would make it a crazy purchase and money
sink, the singer said,
"I just want it, bro!
It looks so nice.
Like, I'm one of those types of guys.
I have to buy everything."
According to the article, Lil Uzi Vert's dream came true when he bought a $1.7 million Bugatti
Veyron from the legendary boxer Floyd Mayweather.
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