“There are very few rock stars in America. I’m the only rockstar.”
Lil Uzi Vert is a polarising artist. Bring his name up amongst a group of friends and you’ll probably trigger commentary on opposite sides of the spectrum. Though hip hop holds pop culture ransom in the US right now, his demeanour, aura and appearance strike a stark disparity between the art and the artist. Lil Uzi Vert has been known to push the boundaries, and on Sunday night in Sydney, we mindlessly followed him right to the edge.
Warmed up by a potent range of bangers, by the time Lil Uzi Vert was summoned, the sold-out Enmore Theatre was more than ready for the night ahead. Uzi exploded onto the stage, kicking things off with “Sauce It Up”. His youthful exuberance remained just as infectious as he bounced back and forth all through “444+222”.
“Oh, so that’s what y’all wanna to do!? Y’all wanna turn this motherfucker all the way up!?”, he teased. “So let’s do it!”. His larger-than-life charisma was magnified tenfold with a tongue-in-cheek rendition of “Do What I Want”. Beaming grins and trademark shoulder leans had the crowd captivated as he sprung across the stage, repeating the childish hook over and over and egging the crowd on to sing it back even louder.
“Ya’ll wanna do it how we do it in America!?” He announced, and the answer was a resounding yes. “Money Longer”, “Ps and Qs” and “You Was Right” followed, sending the crowd into a full-blown meltdown. With every drop, the CO2 cannons fired and the mosh pit of day-one loyalists intensified. The catchy, non-sensical lyrics behind each track gathered more and more momentum, demanding a higher level of energy than the last.
Lil Uzi pumped out verse after verse, managing to sustain the same level of exorbitant energy right from the start. Tearing through “Of Course We Ghetto Flowers”, “Top”, “7am” and “SideLine Watching Hold On” – just to name a few – the man was well and truly on fire. As we blindly followed him into the finale, he had us all eating right out of the palm of his hands.
The scenes that followed can only be described as pandemonium, with his iconic feature verse on Migos’ “Bad and Boujee” leading straight into the blistering heat of “Wokeuplikethis”, his collaboration with Playboi Carti. But it didn’t stop there – the singalongs continued with his two biggest hits to date falling back to back: “The Way Life Goes” and “XO Tour Llif3”. The audience rose to the occasion and evolved into a unified choir, wailing the lyrics right back at Lil Uzi as he paced across the stage and breathed new life into the crowd.
After “Dark Queen” and a tribute to the late Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert was down and out, abruptly disappearing off the stage without warning, leaving us all to process one rambunctious riot of a show as we piled out of the sweat-drenched venue.
Photos by Lachlan Tompsett.