Black Friday is certainly, well, jam packed. From shaking off the Thanksgiving food coma and the mix of fun and stress that is travel and seeing family, to the once-dead malls and plazas coming alive for a brief but intense stint, there is almost never time to rest. While I tend, for the most part, to avoid leaving my house on Black Friday unless forced, I certainly needed no convincing when I found out Lil Uzi Vert was coming to Boston on the very day. While I confess I am not obsessed with Uzi, I have always enjoyed their music and tend to blast it through my earphones while working out and on car rides where I want to be hyped up. I do not know every single word to every one of their songs, but I certainly know more than the big hits (though I confess , my favorite song remains “XO Tour Llif3 [Life]”). I asked my girlfriend, who loves Uzi, if she would like to come as well, and it ended up being quite a group–my br0ther is a huge fan, and we ended up going with him and his girlfriend, as well as two of my cousins.
While I have been to a multitude of concerts in my life, this show was my first time at a rap concert–and while I have heard stories, I did not know exactly what to expect. That said, it turns out that I very much enjoyed it! Admittedly, with my girlfriend and I both being college students with minimum or near-minimum wage jobs, neither of us wanted to break the bank for tickets, so we opted for the highest (and cheapest)-level balcony. That did keep us well out of any moshing or activity going on on the floor, but we were very okay with that. Though our seats were objectively some of the worst in the venue, we still had a nice view and could see everything we needed to. The DJ running the pre-show was very enjoyable and definitely receptive to the mood of the crowd, and Uzi’s set was great. They played a nice mix of newer and older songs, as well as bigger hits and deeper cuts. I knew almost everything that was played, and my girlfriend and I had a great time dancing and yelling out lyrics. Somehow, screaming the words to “Money Longer” and “Just Wanna Rock” was the most cathartic thing I could have done after a rather rough semester. Uzi was also very receptive to the crowd and, while the crowd was already extremely energetic, did a great job hyping everyone up. Additionally, they brought fans–including younger ones–up on stage at the end and very clearly made their nights, which was really fun to see. That said, I would not recommend an Uzi show to anyone younger than about sixteen. To anyone over that, though? I would definitely go! Even without knowing the deepest cuts of Uzi’s albums, they still put on a great show, and we all had a really fun time–and danced so hard that once we finally made it home at 2am, we all passed out almost immediately!