The album was first teased by Uzi in December 2020, (later revealed to be the songs "Pluto to Mars" and "I Gotta") during a two-hour-long Instagram Live in which they previewed unreleased music and revealed they would be dropping a mixtape exclusively on SoundCloud.[5] Uzi announced the album's title in an Instagram post on July 16, 2021.[6] The title might be a reference to the $24 million pink diamond they had pierced into their forehead in February 2021.[7] On October 9, 2021, while attending a friend's wedding, Uzi revealed to a fan that the tape would be released before Halloween.[8] They later went back on those statements on October 22, explaining to some fans on the street:
No, it's not [dropping next week]. Then it drop next week, and then it sounds like shit, and I gotta hear from like one-hundred-thousand people on the Internet, "This sucks!" So you gotta let me take my time… I'm taking my time so it won't suck.
Months later, on December 2, 2021, Uzi appeared on a live stream with Kai Cenat in which they confirmed that the album would be completed the same night.[citation needed]
Following the release of the lead and only single of the album, "Just Wanna Rock", on October 17, 2022, Uzi's manager, DJ Drama, suggested that the album is in its final stages while noting over 680 songs were considered for the album's tracklist.[9] In June 2023, Uzi noted that the album would be released the same month. On June 17, Uzi had taken to Instagram to post an alternate cover art to the project.[10] Through an Instagram live on June 18 with Cenat, Uzi shared updates regarding the rollout and tracklist of the album as they noted that the tracklist would include twenty-six songs consisting of "Just Wanna Rock", and two bonus songs which they described as:[11]
special to me, that some people love that didn't really get to reach the day of light.
They also announced that the cover art would release in "a couple of days" and that the tracklist would release "this week," while confirming the release date of June 30. When asked by Kai about the features on the awaited album, Uzi stated:[12]
Not that many features, but it's the features that everybody think I should have…where I started is where imma finish.
On June 26, 2023, Uzi revealed the cover art and the release date on their website and simultaneously released the Gibson Hazard directed trailer for the album to build anticipation leading up to it.[13][14]
Pink Tape received generally positive reviews but polarized critics for it's experimental sound. The review aggregator Metacritic assigned Pink Tape a weighted average score of 64, indicating "generally favorable" reviews, based on 5 critic reviews.[15]
Robin Murray from Clash stated: "A work of quite stunning creativity, Pink Tape is well worth the wait. Long rumoured, frequently speculated upon, only their most dogged of fans would have expected such brilliance – this lengthy, thrill-a-minute release could well be their finest moment."[22]
Clayton Purdom from Rolling Stone stated: "Their long-awaited Pink Tape finds an artist still relentlessly barreling forward, leaving everyone in the dust–including, quite possibly, many listeners. Pink Tape is a 26-track, 90-minute gauntlet in which Uzi's maximalism finds its fullest expression imaginable: galaxy-smashing rap-rock. Everything is as big as it can be. Uzi samples a WWE theme song by CFO$ at length, interpolates Eiffel 65's 'Blue', and covers System Of A Down's 'Chop Suey' pretty much verbatim. It's superhero theme music from an anime-worshiping genre apostate — an album of light-cycle chases and samurai clashes set to Def Leppard shredding."[1]
Discussing the album, reviewers from Complex praised Pink Tape for its creativity and ambitious scope, but criticized the album as having inconsistent song quality as well as genre influences that were not combined cohesively.[23]
Matthew Ritchie from Pitchfork stated: "At 26 tracks, Pink Tape is bloated and messy, with occasional flashes of excellence between grating screamo misfires and unremarkable songs that feel like retreads of Playboi Carti or Trippie Redd hits. It undermines Uzi’s sterling record and acts as a cautionary tale about undiscerning genre adventures; instead of driving into exciting new terrain, it seems like they are just veering in the wrong direction."[24]
Commercial performance
In the United States, Pink Tape debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 chart, opening with 167,000 album-equivalent units consisting of 11,000 album sales and 154,000 streaming units (calculated from the 210.39 million on-demand streams the album's tracks received). It became Uzi's third number-one album in the country and the third-largest opening week of 2023 at the time. Pink Tape is the first hip hop album of 2023 to top the Billboard 200; marking the longest wait in a calendar year for a rap album to lead the chart since Cypress Hill's Black Sunday (1993). It also ended the chart's longest gap between number-one rap albums in almost 30 years, with Metro Boomin's Heroes & Villains (2022) being the last hip hop album to lead the chart prior to Pink Tape's debut.[25][26] 18 of the album's 26 tracks debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, helping Uzi become the fourteenth artist in the chart's history to log 100 career entries on the survey.[27]
"Fire Alarm" and "Rehab" feature uncredited vocals by Fousheé
Sample credits
"Nakamura" samples the song "The Rising Sun" by CFO$, which is the ring entrance theme of professional wrestler Shinsuke Nakamura for whom the song is named.
"Crush Em" contains an interpolation of the song "Myron" by Lil Uzi Vert.
^To promote his new album Eternal Atake 2, Lil Uzi Vert added a symbol to the center of the cover to represent its promotion. It was also used on all of Uzi's discography covers to promote the album, except Luv Is Rage 1.5 and his early mixtapes.
^"Czech Albums – Top 100". ČNS IFPI. Note: On the chart page, select 27.Týden 2023 on the field besides the words "CZ – ALBUMS – TOP 100" to retrieve the correct chart. Retrieved July 10, 2023.
