Lil Uzi Vert has always been willing to embrace the stranger side of life, but they recently revealed that they’d rather not be known as a rap outcast.
In an interview with GQ Hype, which dropped on Thursday (August 3), the Philadelphia native revealed that though they’re aware that “the industry” thinks of them as something different than what they are, they’d prefer to be defined on their own terms.
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“I’m not really the outcast, even though I take on the outcast aesthetic,” they said. “You got the cool kids and the jocks. Then you got the nerds, then you got the kids with behavior problems.”
They continued: “But I’m more of the class clown. Some days people will really like me. And then some days I get on they nerves. The class clown is just trying to make friends.”
In the same interview, Lil Uzi Vert talked about their early influences, including Chance The Rapper’s Acid Rap.
“It was so weird to me. I didn’t understand how he was taking tones of music that I really don’t like but making me like them.”
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Released in April 2013 before the streaming era, Acid Rap launched Chance The Rapper’s career in a big way. Despite being released for free, the project still ended up denting the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums chart due to bootleg downloads on iTunes and Amazon.
The project’s official home was the mixtape site DatPiff, where it has since been certified “diamond” with over one million downloads. The tape features appearances from Childish Gambino, Twista, Vic Mensa, Ab-Soul, Saba and Noname.
On the new music front, after dropping The Pink Tape last month, Lil Uzi Vert is seemingly gearing up to continue Young Thug’s legacy with their next project, Barter 16.
Uzi revealed plans for the project shortly after Pink Tape went to No. 1 on the Billboard 200 chart last month, earning roughly 167,000 album-equivalent units in its first week.
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“Sitting here thinking /bout how I went #1 on a experimental tape,” they wrote on their Instagram Stories. “My apologies Barter 16 mixtape on the way.”
Along with the announcement, Lil Uzi Vert saluted Thug — who remains behind bars awaiting trial in the YSL RICO case — by writing: “Free Slime.”
