Pink Tape (Lil Uzi Vert Album)

''Pink Tape'' is the third solo studio album by American rapper and singer Lil Uzi Vert. It was released through Generation Now and Atlantic Records on June 30, 2023. The album features guest appearances from Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, Bring Me the Horizon, Don Toliver, and Babymetal. Production was handled by a variety of record producers, including Bring Me the Horizon themselves, Don Cannon, Brandon Finessin, Arca, Bnyx, Oogie Mane, Cubeatz, WondaGurl, Bugz Ronin, Ken Carson, Bobby Raps, Rick Rubin, Serj Tankian, Daron Malakian, Kobametal, Wheezy, and Charlie Handsome, among others. The album serves as a successor to their third extended play '' Red & White'' (2022), which released a year earlier.

The album was supported by two singles, " Just Wanna Rock" and " Endless Fashion" featuring Nicki Minaj. It features elements of alternative hip hop, punk rap, rage rap, rap metal, and metalcore. ''Pink Tape'' debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart, opening with 167,000 album-equivalent units consisting of 11,000 album sales and 154,000 streaming units (calculated from the 210.39 million on-demand streams the album's tracks received).

Background and release

The album was first teased by Uzi in December 2020, (later revealed to be the songs "Pluto to Mars" and "I Gotta") during a two-hour-long Instagram Live in which they previewed unreleased music and revealed they would be dropping a mixtape exclusively on SoundCloud. Uzi announced the album's title in an Instagram post on July 16, 2021. The title might be a reference to the $24 million pink diamond they had pierced into their forehead in February 2021. On October 9, 2021, while attending a friend's wedding, Uzi revealed to a fan that the tape would be released before Halloween. They later went back on those statements on October 22, explaining to some fans on the street:

No, it's not ropping next week Then it drop next week, and then it sounds like shit, and I gotta hear from like one-hundred-thousand people on the Internet, "This sucks!" So you gotta let me take my time… I'm taking my time so it won't suck.

Months later, on December 2, 2021, Uzi appeared on a live stream with Kai Cenat in which they confirmed that the album would be completed the same night.

Following the release of the lead and only single of the album, " Just Wanna Rock", on October 17, 2022, Uzi's manager, DJ Drama, suggested that the album is in its final stages while noting over 680 songs were considered for the album's tracklist. In June 2023, Uzi noted that the album would be released the same month. On June 17, Uzi had taken to Instagram to post an alternate cover art to the project. Through an Instagram live on June 18 with Cenat, Uzi shared updates regarding the rollout and tracklist of the album as they noted that the tracklist would include twenty-six songs consisting of "Just Wanna Rock", and two bonus songs which they described as:

special to me, that some people love that didn't really get to reach the day of light.

They also announced that the cover art would release in "a couple of days" and that the tracklist would release "this week," while confirming the release date of June 30. When asked by Kai about the features on the awaited album, Uzi stated:

Not that many features, but it's the features that everybody think I should have…where I started is where imma finish.

On June 26, 2023, Uzi revealed the cover art and the release date on their website and simultaneously released the Gibson Hazard directed trailer for the album to build anticipation leading up to it.

Critical reception

The review aggregator Metacritic assigned ''Pink Tape'' a weighted average score of 64, indicating "generally favorable" reviews, based on 5 critic reviews.

Robin Murray from '' Clash'' stated: "A work of quite stunning creativity, ''Pink Tape'' is well worth the wait. Long rumoured, frequently speculated upon, only their most dogged of fans would have expected such brilliance – this lengthy, thrill-a-minute release could well be their finest moment."

Clayton Purdom from ''Rolling Stone'' stated: "Their long-awaited ''Pink Tape'' finds an artist still relentlessly barreling forward, leaving everyone in the dust–including, quite possibly, many listeners. ''Pink Tape'' is a 26-track, 90-minute gauntlet in which Uzi's maximalism finds its fullest expression imaginable: galaxy-smashing rap-rock. Everything is as big as it can be. Uzi samples a WWE theme song by CFO$ at length, interpolates Eiffel 65's 'Blue', and covers System Of A Down's ' Chop Suey' pretty much verbatim. It's superhero theme music from an anime-worshiping genre apostate — an album of light-cycle chases and samurai clashes set to Def Leppard shredding."

Discussing the album, reviewers from '' Complex'' praised ''Pink Tape'' for its creativity and ambitious scope, but criticized the album as having inconsistent song quality as well as genre influences that were not combined cohesively.

Matthew Ritchie from '' Pitchfork'' stated: "At 26 tracks, ''Pink Tape'' is bloated and messy, with occasional flashes of excellence between grating screamo misfires and unremarkable songs that feel like retreads of Playboi Carti or Trippie Redd hits. It undermines Uzi’s sterling record and acts as a cautionary tale about undiscerning genre adventures; instead of driving into exciting new terrain, it seems like they are just veering in the wrong direction."

Commercial performance

In the United States, ''Pink Tape'' debuted at number one on the ''Billboard'' 200 chart, opening with 167,000 album-equivalent units consisting of 11,000 album sales and 154,000 streaming units (calculated from the 210.39 million on-demand streams the album's tracks received). It became Uzi's third number-one album in the country and the third-largest opening week of 2023 at the time. ''Pink Tape'' is the first hip hop album of 2023 to top the ''Billboard'' 200; marking the longest wait in a calendar year for a rap album to lead the chart since Cypress Hill's '' Black Sunday'' (1993). It also ended the chart's longest gap between number-one rap albums in almost 30 years, with Metro Boomin's ''Heroes & Villains'' (2022) being the last hip hop album to lead the chart prior to ''Pink Tape'''s debut. 18 of the album's 26 tracks debuted on the ''Billboard'' Hot 100, helping Uzi become the fourteenth artist in the chart's history to log 100 career entries on the survey.

Track listing

Notes
* "Fire Alarm" and "Rehab" feature uncredited vocals by Fousheé

Sample credits
* "Nakamura" samples the song "The Rising Sun" by CFO$, which is the ring entrance theme of professional wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura for whom the song is named.
* "Crush Em" contains an interpolation of the song "Myron" by Lil Uzi Vert.
* "Endless Fashion" contains an interpolation of the song "Blue (Da Ba Dee)" by Eiffel 65.
* "Mama I'm Sorry" contains interpolations of " Somebody That I Used To Know", as performed by Gotye and Kimbra and "Hate Bein' Sober" by Chief Keef featuring 50 Cent and Wiz Khalifa.
* "Fire Alarm" contains a sample of the song " Stress" by Justice.
* "CS" is a cover of the song "Chop Suey!" by System of a Down.

Charts

Weekly charts

Year-end charts

Certifications

References

{{Lil Uzi Vert

2023 albums
Lil Uzi Vert albums
Atlantic Records albums
Albums produced by Arca (musician)
Albums produced by Bobby Raps
Albums produced by Cubeatz
Albums produced by Daron Malakian
Albums produced by Don Cannon
Albums produced by Rick Rubin
Albums produced by Serj Tankian
Albums produced by Wheezy
Albums produced by WondaGurl
Albums produced by Ken Carson
Albums produced by Bnyx
Alternative metal albums by American artists