The Elusive Lil Uzi Vert Talks Jeff Koons and How He Found His Voice in Fashion

In the few short years it’s taken Lil Uzi Vert to yah yah yah his way to the front of the emo-rap movement, the 23-year-old has developed a fervent cult following and notched several unexpected mainstream smashes. But a persistent question has followed the “Bad and Boujee”–featured rapper all the way to the upper reaches of fame: Is he serious? His contemporaries, like Lil Yachty and Playboi Carti, have fairly conventional relationships with popular culture. But Uzi is a rapper from North Philly who calls himself a rock star and breaks all the rules of how hip-hop is supposed to sound. He gives meltdown-level, Joaquin Phoenix–performance-art interviews. And he’s as much a walking meme as he is a celebrity, with a gift for Vine-length quips—not to mention 30-foot stage dives—that go viral. How much of Uzi’s character is an inside joke among the Juul generation? I went to Irving, Texas, to find out. Just kidding—I went to Texas to talk to him about the drip.

Few artists achieve such a singular vision for their personal style, not in an era when entourages have expanded to include creative directors and “day stylists.” Uzi dresses instead with a flair reminiscent of Axl Rose, Marilyn Manson, and Prince, if Prince shopped at Dover Street Market and had a standing appointment with Ben Baller (the L.A. jeweler who made Uzi a $200K diamond pendant of Manson’s bust). The only question more unknowable than what Uzi will wear on any given night is whether he’ll even show up.

Lil Uzi is scheduled to take the stage in Irving at 10:00 P.M. for one of a handful of spring shows. It’s 10:30 and his small team is furiously texting. Rappers showing up late is neither unusual nor a crisis, but with Uzi, anything is possible. The previous weekend, he canceled a headlining performance at BUKU fest in New Orleans after missing his flight from Philadelphia, where he grew up and lives when he’s not recording in Atlanta. When the festival organizers got word a few hours before Uzi was to take the stage, they projected a message on the main stage:

LIL UZI IS STILL IN PHILADELPHIA AND DECIDED NOT TO COME AT THE LAST MINUTE. THERE IS NO REASON...SUPPORT ARTISTS WHO SUPPORT THIER [sic] FANS

By 10:40, the only sure thing is that the huge Texas skies are about to unleash a biblical thunderstorm. As the cop manning the loading dock at the Toyota Music Factory stresses about Irving’s 11:00 P.M. sound curfew, Uzi’s black van pulls in and, at the same moment, DJ PForReal drops the beat to an unreleased track inside. Uzi is wearing a patterned camp shirt and plaid Burberry scarf over skinny Rick Owens jeans and white Air Force Ones. He’s tied the scarf over his Joker-green dreads, and his neck is wrapped in several pounds of gold braids and diamond-encrusted pieces, the largest of which says “YSL” in bubble letters. I fire off a few questions as he hops up the stairs: Quick portrait for GQ? He strikes a pose, hands flashing peace signs on either side of the scarf. After about seven frames, he bolts for the entrance. What’s that shirt? Prada? “Um, Burberry,” he says calmly. Damn, bricked it. Less than 20 seconds later, he’s at the edge of the stage. The thousands of Texan high schoolers chanting UZI UZI UZI in the amphitheater are, if anything, even more lit after waiting all night. Someone hands him a mic. Suddenly all 5 feet and 4 inches of pure energy that is Lil Uzi Vert bounds into the spotlight, and the crowd goes absolutely apeshit.

Uzi had a massive 2017, starting with “Bad and Boujee” hitting the top of the charts at the beginning of the year. Then he dropped “XO Tour Llif3” on SoundCloud, which went on to become one of the most-played tracks on SoundCloud ever. His first record, Luv Is Rage 2, proceeded to go #1 on the Billboard charts. This year is shaping up similarly, if his new track with Travis Scott and Kanye West is any indication. And he’s managed all that while walking around every hoop the music industry–media complex has asked him to jump through. He leaks his own songs seemingly at random and embraces a particularly sporadic and inscrutable kind of social-media presence. Where his peers see a route to stardom through interviews and Sprite ads, Uzi sees shit he doesn’t want to do. If you try to pin Uzi down, he’ll chuck his Gucci shoes into the ocean and wear shorts and a Marilyn Manson tee on your magazine cover.

After a 30-odd-minute set that features “Bad and Boujee,” Uzi hitting the Shoot Dance, and a couple “XO Tour Llif3” performances, Uzi and his group of friends wait out the storm backstage. As they roll the requisite post-show blunt, I think about what one of Uzi’s most famous fans, Jeff Koons, said a few weeks prior. Koons is an unreserved Uzi stan, which makes more sense when you consider Koons thinks he is woefully misunderstood by his critics, telling the Guardian he thinks “Little Uzi” is “very poetic.” Koons continued: “He’s able to speak about a kind of microcosm that actually represents one community that can be looked at as a whole. I think it’s very pop; it’s very connecting. I just think it’s brilliant.” Perhaps Koons knew that Lil Uzi had been spotted carrying his collaborative Mona Lisa Louis Vuitton wallet. But after hearing thousands of Texans screaming, “push me to the edge / all my friends are dead” over and over for about six minutes, shaking the very foundations of the brand new amphitheater, it’s hard to deny that Koons is on to something.

After about half an hour, the rain is coming down heavier than before, but the weed has been smoked and the dozen-strong crew—some dressed in Prada and Gosha Rubchinskiy like Uzi’s drip has trickled down—has somewhere in Dallas to be. Uzi throws on a black velvet Evisu souvenir jacket for his exit. Before he splits, I ask if he saw the Koons quote. “For real?” Uzi says, genuinely surprised. Yeah, he listens to you when he lifts weights. “For real?” Uzi cracks a sly smile, flashing his braces, which complement his diamond septum ring and nose bridge bar. “You know, I got this weird thing in my head that people think I’m weird. But when I hear that, that’s cool. I want to meet him.”

It was the first time all night Lil Uzi had displayed anything less than complete and utter self-possession, had indicated that Uzi is a kind of shy 23-year-old kid who, on some level, is bothered that people don’t take his art seriously. Then, unprompted, he tugs on his bomber. “I just got this jacket,” he says. Plenty of rappers, like Lil Wayne, A$AP Rocky, and Uzi’s friend Young Thug, have made waves with their oddball style. Their own path was charted years ago by clotheshorses and exultant dressers André 3000 and Diddy. But Uzi’s style is uncategorizable. There is no real precedent. One day it’s all Von Dutch, the next he’s wearing Craig Green with women’s Louis Vuitton Archlights. He wore goth-raver bondage pants with a black Balenciaga hoodie to the Grammy Awards. He rocked a Stella McCartney look while feasting on a $1,000 crab in Australia. (This was all in the span of just over a month.) If we’re in a Wild West period of fashion, Uzi is the notorious outlaw who chases the sheriff out of town.

During the show I meet Uzi’s three best friends and shopping buddies, who are barely drinking age and accompany him everywhere: Amir Banks, Amin Warren, and Rakamon Johnson. They tell me Uzi found his voice in fashion well before he started making music. “Shit, he always was different!” says Warren. “He was a trend-setter.” His rebellious streak was going full throttle when he attended a high school with a uniform. “He used to get his jacket taken every day,” says Banks. “We had a uniform, he never came in uniform.” Uzi says his success has helped him dial his style all the way in—and not just because he can buy and wear anything he wants. “I always had a vision for my style,” Uzi tells me as we head out of the venue. “But before, I didn’t really get it. Even when I got money, my style wasn’t all the way there yet. But with traveling the world and seeing different stuff, I get it now.”

Of course, the money has helped. Guided by the mantra “No stylist, just a wallet,” Uzi might be spending more money than Iverson did in his prime. “Style-wise, Uzi was always advanced,” says DJ Drama, who signed Uzi to Atlantic Records. “And then once his shows started increasing with the finances, it just enabled him to do even more than what he wanted to do.” And what does a trip to the store with Uzi entail? “It’s nothing less than four zeroes,” says Drama. His buddies corroborated the staggering figure. “He’s literally spending house money on clothes,” says Warren. “Every time,” adds Banks. His favorite stores are Barneys and Dover Street Market, and Drama says he has a soft spot for Goyard. “That’s all he cares about, is clothes,” says Johnson, who’s also Uzi’s designated Instagram fit-pic-taker. But, he quickly adds, it’s music over everything. “It’s crazy ’cause his clothes kind of support the music—he gets inspiration from his clothes.”

When I ask Uzi how he would sum up his personal style, he takes a long moment and looks down. “Dressed in the dark,” he says, and with that he turns away to pose for a few more photos and hop in his waiting van. It’s easy to write Uzi’s style off as a joke, as many did when he wore an Avril Lavigne–approved off-the-shoulder striped top (by Faith Connexion) last year. But like his music, it’s all about turning the rulebook on its head, and it’s real as can be. For now, Uzi’s parade of fits on Instagram has been put on hold. One of his last, posted just after the Texas show, includes a caption from Warren: “Uzi is currently working on the best music in his and your life so he does not have a phone New Music soon... he will be back in a few weeks Maybe he says.” Since then a series of bizarre posts—allegedly, though almost certainly not, from people who found his password written in the bathroom of a massage parlor/brothel—has dominated his feed. It’s a particularly trollish promotional stunt, even for Uzi. But he’ll show up eventually. At least we hope he will. His fans are waiting.