Pink Tape is the third solo album by American rapper and singer Lil Uzi Vert. It was released through Generation Now and Atlantic Records on June 30, 2023.[2] The album features guest appearances from Travis Scott, Nicki Minaj, Snow Strippers, 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.
| Pink Tape | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 Original cover[a] | ||||
| Studio album by | ||||
| Released | June 30, 2023 | |||
| Recorded | 2017, 2020–2023 | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length | 87:03 | |||
| Label |
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| Producer |
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| Lil Uzi Vert chronology | ||||
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| Singles from Pink Tape | ||||
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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 metal, and metalcore.[3][4] 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.
Background and release
editThe 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.[5] Uzi announced the album's title in an Instagram post on July 16, 2021.[6] The title might be a reference to the $24 million pink diamond they had pierced into their forehead in February 2021.[7] On October 9, 2021, while attending a friend's wedding, Uzi revealed to a fan that the tape would be released before Halloween.[8] They later went back on those statements on October 22, explaining to some fans on the street:
No, it's not [dropping 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.[citation needed] 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.[9] 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.[10] 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:[11]
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:[12]
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.[13][14]
Critical reception
edit| Aggregate scores | |
|---|---|
| Source | Rating |
| Metacritic | 64/100[15] |
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| AllMusic |   [16] |
| Clash | 9/10[17] |
| Financial Times | [18] |
| HipHopDX | 3.1/5[19] |
| Pitchfork | 5.7/10[20] |
| Slant Magazine |  [21] |
Pink Tape received generally positive reviews but polarized critics for it's experimental sound. The review aggregator Metacritic assigned Pink Tape a weighted average score of 64, indicating "generally favorable" reviews, based on 5 critic reviews.[15]
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."[22]
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."[1]
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.[23]
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."[24]
Commercial performance
editIn 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.[25][26] 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.[27]
Track listing
edit| No. | Title | Writer(s) | Producer(s) | Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | "Flooded the Face" |
|
| 3:12 |
| 2. | "Suicide Doors" |
|
| 4:19 |
| 3. | "Aye" (featuring Travis Scott) |
|
| 3:27 |
| 4. | "Crush Em" |
|
| 2:45 |
| 5. | "Amped" |
|
| 2:53 |
| 6. | "x2" |
|
| 3:54 |
| 7. | "Died and Came Back" |
|
| 3:00 |
| 8. | "Spin Again" |
|
| 1:37 |
| 9. | "That Fiya" |
|
| 2:34 |
| 10. | "I Gotta" |
|
| 2:53 |
| 11. | "Endless Fashion" (featuring Nicki Minaj) |
|
| 3:36 |
| 12. | "Mama, I'm Sorry" |
| 3:30 | |
| 13. | "All Alone" |
|
| 3:42 |
| 14. | "Nakamura" |
|
| 3:17 |
| 15. | "Just Wanna Rock" |
|
| 2:03 |
| 16. | "Fire Alarm" (featuring Snow Strippers) |
|
| 3:05 |
| 17. | "CS" |
| 3:32 | |
| 18. | "Werewolf" (featuring Bring Me the Horizon) |
|
| 3:59 |
| 19. | "Pluto to Mars" |
|
| 4:06 |
| 20. | "Patience" (featuring Don Toliver) |
|
| 4:22 |
| 21. | "Days Come and Go" |
|
| 4:17 |
| 22. | "Rehab" |
|
| 4:05 |
| 23. | "The End" (featuring Babymetal) |
| 3:07 | |
| 24. | "Zoom" (bonus track) | 2:46 | ||
| 25. | "Of Course" (bonus track) |
|
| 3:28 |
| 26. | "Shardai" (bonus track) |
|
| 3:21 |
| Total length: | 87:03 | |||
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
edit
Weekly chartsedit
|
Year-end chartsedit
|
Certifications
edit| Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
|---|---|---|
| Canada (Music Canada)[58] | Gold | 40,000‡ |
| United States (RIAA)[59] | Platinum | 1,000,000‡ |
|
‡ Sales+streaming figures based on certification alone. | ||
Release history
edit| Region | Date | Format | Ref. |
|---|---|---|---|
| Various | June 30, 2023 | [60] | |
| July 5, 2023 | CD | [61] | |
| October 20, 2023 | LP record | [62] |
Notes
edit- ^ To promote his new album Eternal Atake 2, Lil Uzi Vert added a symbol to the center of the cover to represent its promotion. It was also used on all of Uzi's discography covers to promote the album, except Luv Is Rage 1.5 and his early mixtapes.
References
edit- ^ a b c Purdom, Clayton (June 30, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Just Wants to Rock on the Sprawling 'Pink Tape'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved June 30, 2023.
- ^ Anderson, Carys (June 30, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert finally releases new album Pink Tape". Consequence. Retrieved June 30, 2023.
- ^ Purdom, Clayton (June 30, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Just Wants to Rock on the Sprawling 'Pink Tape'". Rolling Stone. Retrieved June 30, 2023.
- ^ Ihaza, Jeff (July 5, 2023). "How Lil Uzi Vert Turned 'Pink Tape' Metalcore". Rolling Stone.
- ^ Lee, Craig (December 21, 2020). "Lil Uzi Vert Confirms Two Projects: 'Luv Is Rage 3' & 'Forever Young' | DailyRapFacts". DailyRapFacts. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ Somajor, Kim (July 20, 2021). "New Music,"Pink Tape" from Lil Uzi Could Be On the Way". The Source. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ Waite, Thom (February 4, 2021). "Lil Uzi Vert got a $24 million diamond implanted in his forehead… why?". Dazed. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ McCloud, Taylor (October 12, 2021). "Lil Uzi Vert Says "The Pink Tape" Will Drop Before Halloween". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ Saponara, Michael (February 22, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Has Recorded Almost 700 Songs For 'The Pink Tape,' Says Don Cannon". HipHopDX. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ Fisher, Caroline (June 17, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Teases "The Pink Tape" Cover Art, Potential Collabs With Playboi Carti & Ken Carson". HotNewHipHop. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ Cummings-Grady, Mackenzie (June 19, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Reveals More Details About 'The Pink Tape'". HipHopDX. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ Galindo, Thomas (June 19, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Reveals Release Date for 'The Pink Tape'". American Songwriter. Retrieved June 20, 2023.
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert Reveals Release Date And Cover Art For "The Pink Tape"". www.hotnewhiphop.com. June 26, 2023. Retrieved June 26, 2023.
- ^ Galindo, Thomas (June 26, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Reveals Trailer and Cover Art for 'Pink Tape'". American Songwriter. Retrieved June 26, 2023.
- ^ a b Pink Tape by Lil Uzi Vert, retrieved July 24, 2023
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert - The Pink Tape Album Reviews, Songs & More". AllMusic. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
- ^ Murray (June 30, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Clash.
- ^ Hunter-Tilney (July 7, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert: Pink Tape review — an exhausting litany of sexist jokes and brags". Financial Times.
- ^ Fontes, Isaac (July 27, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert | Pink Tape Album Review". HipHopDX. Retrieved August 6, 2023.
- ^ Matthew Ritchie (July 8, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Pink Tape Album Review: A Sprawling, Unabashedly Uncategorizable Opus". Pitchfork.
- ^ Attard (July 3, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Pink Tape Review: A Sprawling, Unabashedly Uncategorizable Opus". Slant.
- ^ Murray, Robin (June 30, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape | Reviews". Clash Magazine Music News, Reviews & Interviews. Retrieved June 30, 2023.
- ^ McKinney, Jessica; Rose, Jordan; Skelton, Eric; Hay, Kameron (June 30, 2023). "First Impressions Of Lil Uzi Vert's New Album 'Pink Tape'". Complex. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert: Pink Tape". Pitchfork. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
- ^ Caulfield, Keith (July 10, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Scores Third No. 1 Album on Billboard 200 With 'Pink Tape'". Billboard. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ Fu, Eddie (July 10, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert topples Morgan Wallen with first No. 1 rap album of 2023". Consequence. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ Zellner, Xander (July 10, 2023). "Lil Uzi Vert Debuts 18 Songs on Hot 100 From New Album 'Pink Tape,' Reaches Historic Milestone". Billboard. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ "Australiancharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Austriancharts.at – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape" (in German). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 12, 2023.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 9, 2023.
- ^ "Ultratop.be – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape" (in French). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 9, 2023.
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert Chart History (Canadian Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved July 11, 2023.
- ^ "Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 27.Týden 2023 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ "Danishcharts.dk – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 12, 2023.
- ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert: Pink Tape" (in Finnish). Musiikkituottajat – IFPI Finland. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
- ^ "Lescharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ "Offiziellecharts.de – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape" (in German). GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Album Top 40 slágerlista – 2023. 27. hét" (in Hungarian). MAHASZ. Retrieved July 13, 2023.
- ^ "Official Irish Albums Chart Top 50". Official Charts Company. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Italiancharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Oricon Top 50 Digital Albums: July 10, 2023" (in Japanese). Oricon. Retrieved July 5, 2023.
- ^ "Billboard Japan Download Albums – Week of July 5, 2023". Billboard Japan (in Japanese). Retrieved July 8, 2023.
- ^ "2023 27-os savaitės klausomiausi (Top 100)" (in Lithuanian). AGATA. July 7, 2023. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Charts.nz – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Norwegiancharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "OLiS - oficjalna lista sprzedaży - albumy" (in Polish). OLiS. Polish Society of the Phonographic Industry. Note: Change the date to 30.06.2023–06.07.2023 under "zmień zakres od–do:". Retrieved July 13, 2023.
- ^ "Top 100 Slovak Albums". International Federation of the Phonographic Industry. Retrieved August 11, 2024.
- ^ "Spanishcharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ "Swedishcharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 28, 2023.
- ^ "Swisscharts.com – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Hung Medien. Retrieved July 9, 2023.
- ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved July 7, 2023.
- ^ "Official R&B Albums Chart Top 40". Official Charts Company. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
- ^ "Lil Uzi Vert Chart History (Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums)". Billboard. Retrieved July 11, 2023.
- ^ "Billboard 200 Albums – Year-End 2023". Billboard. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
- ^ "Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums – Year-End 2023". Billboard. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
- ^ "Canadian album certifications – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Music Canada. Retrieved December 7, 2023.
- ^ "American album certifications – Lil Uzi Vert – Pink Tape". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved August 9, 2024.
- ^ Pink Tape by Lil Uzi Vert on Apple Music, June 30, 2023, retrieved November 1, 2024
- ^ "The Pink Tape - Lil Uzi Vert (#075678614583)". Omega Music. Retrieved November 1, 2024.
- ^ "LIL UZI VERT – PINK TAPE (MARBLE PINK INDIE EXCLUSIVE) - LP •". Lunchbox Records. Retrieved November 1, 2024.