Let me be upfront. I am an Uzi stan. I am 1000% biased. I think Uzi is a generational, revolutionary talent who brought so much to hip hop, set so many trends, and changed the sound in ways that still don’t get enough credit. He was influenced by some giants before him, no question. Young Thug, Chief Keef, Wayne, Kanye. You can hear traces of all of them. But Uzi’s approach, the way he made it more comfortable for the rappers after him to express themselves in ways that just weren’t cool to do in hip hop before, is highly understated. That said, this isn’t just about Uzi. You cannot mention Uzi without mentioning Playboi Carti. You just can’t.

My relationship with Carti is different from my relationship with Uzi. From what I remember, when they both came up, Uzi was a lot more visible. Carti was underground. I remember him coming out with “Broke Boi,” getting cosigns, and slowly building. If you had told me back then that Carti would become what he is now, I would not have believed you based on how he first came out. But if you told me Uzi would evolve into what he is today, I wouldn’t have doubted it for a second. Uzi’s trajectory always felt inevitable. Carti’s felt like something else entirely. He morphed. He went through distinct eras that his fans understand deeply, and each one was a departure from the last.

Now here’s where I have to give Carti his flowers. Right now, today, I think Carti has the biggest influence on underground hip hop of any single artist, and he did it essentially with one album. Whole Lotta Red debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and was later ranked among Rolling Stone’s 200 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time. But the chart position isn’t even the point. The album is now credited with helping define the rage subgenre of trap music and directly influencing artists like Yeat, Ken Carson, and a majority of the current underground rap scene. The production, the sound, the imagery, the cadence, all of it. We hear Carti clones everywhere now. The vocal deliveries, the beat selection, the hooks, the way they perform live, all of that traces back to Carti. As one critic put it, Carti “put all the pieces together to define rage as a genre while already being one of hip-hop’s most influential artists.”

Uzi also has a hand in rage. Luv Is Rage is literally in the title of his earliest and most important projects. We can trace the foundation of that sound back to him. But sonically, the rage movement as it exists now, the buzzing synths, the aggression, the whole aesthetic, that’s Carti’s blueprint. So why do I still give it to Uzi overall?

Every generation has two greats. Michael and Prince. Jay-Z and Nas. Drake and Kendrick. I think in modern hip hop, one tier below Drake and Kendrick, it is clearly Uzi and Carti. And just below them you’ve got artists like Yeat, Destroy Lonely, Ken Carson, and that whole wave, all of whom you can trace directly back to these two. They are the axis.

Uzi’s second studio album, Eternal Atake, debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and racked up 400 million streams, claiming the fourth largest streaming week ever at the time. His Pink Tape also debuted at number one, making Uzi just the third hip-hop artist of the 21st century, alongside Drake and J. Cole, to have their first three studio albums reach the top of the chart. But beyond numbers, “XO Tour Llif3” was a genre-bending moment that genuinely changed how people thought hip hop could sound. It synthesized the emotionality of SoundCloud rap, the melodic trap coming out of Atlanta, and technical precision from Philadelphia in a way that Apple Music described as virtually impossible to overstate in its impact on rap. You could put that song in an alternative rock playlist and it would fit. That kind of genre fluidity opened doors.

Uzi also did something harder to quantify. His willingness to wear feminine clothing and embrace a gender-fluid aesthetic, alongside peers like Young Thug and Playboi Carti, encapsulated a shift in what hip hop could look and feel like for a generation of artists who came after. He made space. And I think a lot of Carti’s own freedom to be as abstract and uncommercial as he is on Whole Lotta Red exists partly because Uzi already pushed those boundaries first.

That’s my core argument. Without Uzi’s run, Whole Lotta Red doesn’t catch on the way it did. Without Luv Is Rage, without The Perfect Luv Tape, without all of those early Uzi projects that changed the sonic landscape, the ground wasn’t as ready for what Carti planted. Carti is the dominant influence right now, today. That’s real. But overall, when we’re talking about total impact and legacy, I have to give the trophy to Uzi.