Photo credit: Hunter Nelson/Summerfest
It now seems almost quaint that Lil Uzi Vert was so widely scorned by old-guard hip-hop circles in 2016, when the excitable Philadelphia rapper became a shorthand for everything superficial about modern rap. Two years and one Lil Pump later, Uzi doesn’t look like such a pariah anymore, but he was never the affront to music that his detractors made him out to be. As vanguard rappers go, he's one of the sharper ones: He’s got a wily delivery and inventive melodic instincts. His songs are sticky and buoyant, and although he knows how to turn a memorable phrase, he understands that a well-placed adlib can be just as impactful as the most eloquently written prose.
And, as he demonstrated Wednesday night for an enormous, overflow crowd at Summerfest’s Harley-Davidson Roadhouse, he's also one hell of a performer. That may be Uzi’s real selling point: Whether live or in the studio, he always sounds glad to be there, and his game spirit is a welcome change of pace in the Drake/Future era, where the default was for rappers to treat stardom as a burden and music as an outlet for misery. After all that gloom, it’s a pleasure to see a rap star genuinely stoked to command such a big stage. Even Uzi's most dour tracks—“XO Tour Llif3,” his “all my friends are dead” song—exude a hyped-up, infectious energy.
Backed by a shouty DJ, Uzi darted around the stage, did some wild-eyed dances, showed off his latest tattoos (a pair of bat wings over his shoulder blades) and just generally worked the crowd into a lather. Midway through the show he tried to goad his fans into starting a mosh pit, instructing them to “open up that middle!,” and they probably would have complied had there been any room to do so. (For reasons clear only to the promoters, Summerfest shies away from booking major rap acts on its Miller Lite Oasis main stage, even when their popularity clearly dictates it. Wednesday night’s Miller Lite Oasis headliner, the mid-tier electronic artist Alesso, played to a far smaller crowd with enviable breathing room.)
|
|
At just 45 minutes, Uzi’s set was short but spirited, and fans didn’t have to wait long to hear the hits: He opened with “Sauce It Up” and played his breakthrough “Money Longer” just minutes later. By the half hour mark he was mining his big guest features, Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” and Playboi Carti’s buzzy “Woke Up Like This.”
He didn’t stick the landing. After playing “XO Tour Llif3” a second time, Uzi just sort of disappeared, slipping the stage without saying a word and leaving behind a DJ who seemed almost as confused as the crowd as to whether he intended to come back. And so for minutes a sea of thousands of fans stood around, waiting if not quite for an encore then at least for some clarification whether the show was over or not. Finally the DJ cut the music and sheepishly packed up. It was an unceremonious end to a concert that up until that moment had felt like a real event, but sometimes less is more anyway. Filler is the death of a good rap show, and Lil Uzi Vert's didn’t have any.
Read more of our Summerfest coverage, including editor picks, concert previews and review here.
