Lil Uzi Vert's Almost Forever EP draws a 1 out of 10 from critic Anthony Fantano

Lil Uzi Vert's scheduled Lollapalooza set, billed around the rapper's 31st birthday, was cancelled Friday, July 31, due to severe weather that shortened or scrapped several performances across the Chicago festival that weekend, NME reported. Uzi still made it onstage, crashing Major Lazer's set on Perry's Stage to perform 2022 track "Just Wanna Rock" while the crowd sang "Happy Birthday."

Hours later, Uzi surprise-released the hip-hop EP "Almost Forever" onto the release calendar, the rapper's first project since 2024's "Eternal Atake 2," timed to land exactly 10 years after "The Perfect LUV Tape." NME had previously given "Eternal Atake" a five-star review, writing that "Lil Uzi Vert still has the game in a chokehold" and calling the rapper "surely our generation's Lil Wayne."

"Almost Forever" did not land the same way with YouTube critic Anthony Fantano, who gave the EP a 1 out of 10 on his channel theneedledrop. "I literally think this is like one of the worst and most pointless projects Uzi has ever released into the world," Fantano said. "Honestly, some of the worst music I've heard in 2026, some of the worst music of Uzi's career."

Fantano's harshest criticism targeted lyrics he called out of step with Uzi's own public identity. "How are you going to be non-binary and have an unironic no homo bar on your song?" he asked, also questioning the project's reliance on familiar tropes: "We're literally writing cough syrup guzzling anthems with emo trap vocal leads at the age of 31."

The review continues a pattern for Fantano, who has a long history of breaking from consensus opinion; he famously gave Kanye West's "My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy" a 6 out of 10 in a review that scored well below Pitchfork's perfect 10 for the same album. "Almost Forever" arrived amid a broader stretch of criticism aimed at Uzi's recent output, with Fantano's take standing out as the harshest yet.