Lil Uzi Vert - XO Tour Llif3

Looking at the year so far, I feel like someone's going to take a look at the Billboard #1's of 2017 and it paints an incredibly misleading picture of what's really going on. Sure, it all fits in with the trends, Migos & Kendrick with their brag-trap-rapping, Ed Sheeran with his tropical pop nonsense, it's the norm. But honestly the Billboard top 10 has been really dark lately.

There's often talk of pop music getting more dour, something that coincides with Drake's height of popularity and any artist closely associated with him. But it was always a mood, I can't remember songs that were so violent, confronting and legitimately depressing. And yet you can look at the top 10 right now, you've got Future contemplating the value in his facade whilst overloading on painkillers. You've got Kendrick aggressively confronting racial profiling with a song that holds no bars in lyrics & production. Kodak Black had something similar going on with "Tunnel Vision" which is one of the most baffling top 10 hits I've seen in some times just for how against the system it was.

And then you've got this song, oh booooy. This song is really freakin' heavy. The fact it came from Lil Uzi Vert is perhaps the biggest surprise of all, but if nothing else it means I can't write him off anymore. The song tackles substance abuse, relationship abuse, and being driven to consider suicide. It's frankly very compelling. And yet this song with the hook of 'Push me to the edge, all my friends are dead' sits in the charts alongside Bruno Mars & Luis Fonsi wanting to treat a girl, and the utter goofball that is "iSpy".

I'm just fascinated that such a curveball can be a hit, and I can't help but wonder what else could be waiting in the wings. For the time being though, I'm really into this.