The 7 best songs on Lil Uzi Vert’s Eternal Atake

The anticipation for Eternal Atake was more than frenzied enough for a dedicated snippet culture to thrive around the songs Uzi teased on Instagram, usually played from the sound system of an expensive car. A highlight of this era was “Rollie,” a still-unreleased song that features a verse from Chief Keef. Like “Cancun” from Uzi’s erstwhile collaborator, “Rollie” was determined to be a career-defining song for its artist based on a few low-quality previews. We may never hear an official release of “Rollie,” but thankfully Eternal Atake contains an Uzi/Keef collaboration that glides with the same effortless chemistry. “Chrome Heart Tags” finds Uzi flexing as only he can, sounding proud and detached at the same time, as if he’s rapping about something as natural as his heartbeat. Keef’s beat makes it feel real: a choir of “oohs” and “ahs” marvel at Uzi as he lists his accomplishments while a string melody places the song in a very palatial mind palace. Who knows what derailed “Rollie,” but “Chrome Heart Tags” is no mere substitute, but an upgrade. -Jordan Darville

“I’m not from earth,” Uzi reiterates at the top of “Venetia.” “I’m from outer space.” It’s a mission statement he delineates over the course of Eternal Atake, but never as melodically as right here. It sounds like what it must feel like to peer through the plexiglass window of Uzi’s palatial rocket ship as it hurtles father and farther away from its origin planet. And even in the blinged out depths of space, he always remembers to beam the blessings down to Philly.- Salvatore Maicki

I’m a simple man. When I hear a Working On Dying tag in an Uzi song, I self-destruct. “Celebration Station” is laced with production that lends itself to Uzi’s recent infatuation with Dance, Dance Revolution music. But it fleshes this flirtation out and creates a world, one set in a cyber-punk universe, where kids congregate at the top of 100-story buildings to go on the internet. Listening to the hook means giving up control of your body. When Uzi says “Too much guap/bands bands,” my feet instinctively try to stomp according to an arrow pattern that doesn’t exist. A hippie adorned in crystals would tell you that this song “heals plants,” and that hippie would be right. -Will Gendron

One industrious stan has insisted that this is the introduction to Renji’s section of Eternal Atake, where Uzi speaks through a sweeter character than he does on the rest of the record. Uzi seems to agree, but “I’m Sorry” still has Uzi as a broken-hearted nihilist, and his confusion even leads him to a mean-spiritedness at points. “I'm sorry for everything I ever said / I'm sorry if you were misled / And I'm sorry if my words messed with your head,” he sings in the hook, before reminding himself that he can’t get romantically involved with a fan again and then, eventually, getting passive-aggressive: “I love when you give brain, I swear that's my only memory.” The spacey production keeps things sounding mellow, but Uzi is a mess of contradictions here — a more accurate representation of post-breakup misery than he could find on a lovelorn just-want-her-back cut. If you don’t believe him when he raps, “I swear that shit, it need to stop, I am too numb, it ain't killing me,” you should trust that instinct. Three lines later he’s “drowning all my sorrows up in rum.” — Alex Robert Ross

Lil Uzi Vert gets deep into the nostalgia on “You Better Move.” The beat, which samples 3D Space Cadet Pinball from the early Microsoft Windows days, feels like a constant power-up. Evoking memories of Saturday mornings, Uzi laments on times when he watched Zoom on public access television and name drops Steve and Blue from Blue’s Clues. He compares his enemies to a Zune where he is an iPod, an obvious distinction of class and wealth. He obliterates his opps with the deeply coveted Blue-Eyes White Dragon, the most iconic card from popular trading card game, Yu-gi-oh. In an impressive feat, Lil Uzi Vert carries the same rhyme scheme for almost the entirety of the song, which is something like 52 bars if you exclude every time he says, “You Better Move.” Is appreciating that sort of thing also nostalgic?- Nalae Anais White

“Urgency” is the only track on the album with a guest feature and it’s pretty apparent why. I think I speak for everyone when I say that an Uzi and Syd collab is exactly what the streets need right now. For starters, the production value alone certifies this as a standout track but the harmonies are really what steal the show. And when that beat drops? BAYBEEEE. Safe to say this will be on repeat until further notice." -Layla Mustafa

I can still remember the morning after “XO Tour Llif3” was unceremoniously uploaded to Lil Uzi Vert’s SoundCloud. Something had shifted. It was one song in a handful of new Uzi loosies, but it would end up being a track that would change the course of rap. It remains the crowning achievement of emo-rap despite being released when it was still a nascent sub-genre, and Uzi’s most commercially successful song. The pressure on Uzi to replicate the song must have been tremendous, which makes “P2” that much more bold. The song revisits “XO” in a fashion that, like the title suggests, is more in line with a sequel than a remix: think Empire Strikes Back following Star Wars rather than George Lucas adding shitty CGI to the original films. Uzi on “P2” is deeper in his feelings and looking closer at his riches, while TM88’s new melodies are less ghostly and more morose, with plucked string instruments leaving their notes to linger like small scars. Uzi once said that he "manipulated time" to make Eternal Atake — in that spirit, "P2" is "XO" from a different dimension's past, a song that gives him the space to finetune his messy emotions and to say "thank you" for the successes to come.- Jordan Darville