Mike Jones gets his flowers from Lil Uzi Vert.
It’s always interesting when rappers reveal who the most influential voices were leading up to their success. Lil Uzi Vert revealed his influences while being interviewed on The Fat Joe Show on Instagram Live last Thursday night (Feb. 11). Uzi made the appearance, of course, sporting his $24 million diamond forehead piercing. During the interview, he revealed the top five artists that helped make him the rapper he is today. The first rapper he mentioned was Mike Jones.
“The first rapper that I ever learned lyric for lyric was Mike Jones. That’s the first rapper I learned everything lyric for lyric, and I wanted to be like him. I had a Boost Mobile and my mom would give me $15 and I’d get phone cards and sh*t and I would spend all my money calling Mike Jones’ number ’cause I wanted to talk to him,” he said.
He even remembered the Houston rapper’s phone number and shared it with fans. “I remember the number by heart. Right now, to this day: 281-330-8004. I felt that star power from him. He had that star power.”
As he moved through his list of influences, he mentioned Lil Wayne, whose style he admitted he actually tried to emulate. “I wanted to be Lil Wayne. When I was younger, girls would say I looked like Lil Wayne, so I would run with that. And I would wear the fedoras, and I would wear the tight Polo tees with the skinnies, and wear the Vans and sh*t,” he added. He also said that he ordered a fake piercing off of Amazon, which had a magnet. He wore the fake piercing below his lip every day so that he could feel more like Lil Wayne.
He also praised his aunt Remy Ma, for some of his success. “I got a gangsta aunt and my aunt definitely a little different. She one of them girls from the hood that was the DMX fan and the Remy Ma fan,” he said.
Another rapper that had a major influence on him was Kurupt, who Vert said had that “East Coast mentality but that West Coast swag. He also mentioned Young Thug, who he described as a “mythical creature.”
“This was later in my life. So, I used to listen to I Came From Nothing, I Came From Nothing 2. I used to watch on YouTube when Young Thug used to perform at the little like skating rink sh*ts. The reason that he was such an influence to me was because he was almost like a mythical creature back then,” he said.
He continued on to say that he always knew that Young Thug would be successful. “I actually knew before the public. Not even before the public. I’m not from Atlanta, so everybody out there knew about that man before me. Atlanta and around Atlanta, Georgia or whatever. But, just where I was from, I felt like I was the first person in the fu**in’ world that was listening to him. I felt like that.”
You can take a look at the full interview below.
