{"id":852721,"date":"2026-08-10T07:42:09","date_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:42:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/852721\/"},"modified":"2026-08-10T07:42:09","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T07:42:09","slug":"lil-uzi-vert-maverick-almost-forever-ep-album-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/852721\/","title":{"rendered":"Lil Uzi Vert: Maverick \u201cAlmost Forever\u201d EP Album Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

Oh, Lil Uzi Vert<\/a>\u2014heavy is the head that wears the $24 million diamond<\/a>. When the Philly rapper unleashed their crowning achievement Eternal Atake<\/a> in March 2020 after years of leaks and label purgatory, it seemed like everything was finally falling into place. What actually followed was a global health emergency. By the time the world opened back up, Uzi had entered the least-inspired period of their career. 2023\u2019s perplexing Pink Tape<\/a> and the next year\u2019s shell-of-its-predecessor Eternal Atake 2<\/a> fulfilled their plagued Atlantic contract and sounded like obligations. Gone were the trap pyrotechnics and six-minute screeds about Vetements that scorched 2015\u2019s Luv Is Rage and 2016\u2019s Lil Uzi Vert Vs. the World into the rage-rap canon. Instead, here was a deflated System of a Down cover<\/a>, a Big Time Rush collab, a Nicki Minaj<\/a> feature where she forebodingly thanked the doctor who made her ass \u201cgreat again, MAGA.\u201d When Uzi cancelled a planned 31st-birthday Lollapalooza set last weekend amid severe weather warnings, it seemed like just the latest cloudy day in a marathon of drear.<\/p>\n

Then, they surprise-dropped Maverick (Almost Forever), a battering ram of an EP that busts open the dam in Uzi\u2019s catalog and all but washes away the blight of the past six years. Their first new release on freshly-launched imprint Cor(e), Maverick cuts through the downtrodden, \u201cis this anything?\u201d tone of EA2 to get to the backbone of Uzi\u2019s triumphant 2015-2016 run. It\u2019s the best project they\u2019ve released since Eternal Atake: a course correction and a revitalization of their proto-rage era that never feels like a retread. Turns out, you don\u2019t need to force an old dog to karaoke \u201cChop Suey\u201d when their OG tricks are so impressive.<\/p>\n

No score yet, be the first to add.<\/p>\n

Seriously, when was the last time Uzi spat like this? \u201cMaverick Intro\u201d thrusts us into the action, instantly reminding you where they got their name\u2014for rapping like a \u201clittle machine gun\u201d\u2013over a towering synth-and-snare stack courtesy of Trilla and ZeeGoinXrazy. The latter, a Connecticut beatmaker, earns every ounce of his promotion in the absence of frequent collaborator Brandon Finessin, who doesn\u2019t appear for the first time since Luv Is Rage 2<\/a>. A prime example is \u201cGas. Brake.,\u201d a pressurized vessel for Uzi to bound into their pocket at the edge of breath control. It may seem like every artful description for a BBL baddie has been spoken for by now, but Uzi\u2019s elastic delivery of \u201cShe done pulled up with her new body, she is my plaster bae\u201d merits a spot in the crowded canon.<\/p>\n

Across eight tracks, Uzi manages to evoke their greatest successes in spirit, not interpolation. \u201cYoko\u201d could be mistaken for a Luv Is Rage demo if it didn\u2019t directly reference their current partner JT. (\u201cI hope JT don\u2019t think she Yoko,\u201d Uzi frets before moving on in all of five seconds: \u201cI\u2019m so fresh, you dressed like hobo.\u201d) \u201cPoured,\u201d while clearly nostalgic for the codeined-out churn of \u201cTop<\/a>,\u201d refreshes the formula with a beat that doesn\u2019t switch so much as molt, transmogrifying over three minutes until it dissipates into a mound of beeping detritus. \u201cOh my gooood, I\u2019m going hard,\u201d Uzi chants in their signature drone, just as surprised as you are.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oh, Lil Uzi Vert\u2014heavy is the head that wears the $24 million diamond. When the Philly rapper unleashed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":852722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[342,49,48,75,341,343],"class_list":["post-852721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-albums","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-web"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=852721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/852721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/852722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=852721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=852721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=852721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}