Iconoclastic rapper Lil Uzi Vert had intended to ring in their 31st birthday in 2026 with a Lollapalooza performance, until the set was cancelled due to incoming storms. But earthly weather was no match for the self-proclaimed cosmic traveller, who proceeded to crash Major Lazer’s set the next day and dropped an unannounced EP as a consolation. The surprise EP, Maverick “Almost Forever”, arrived exactly a decade after The Perfect LUV Tape, and almost two years after the divisive Eternal Atake 2, whose reception Uzi gestures to on the anthemic “Say It Was”: “Oh, you thought I really lost my touch?/It ain’t what you thought it was,” they scoff, cracking up mid-verse. Elsewhere among Maverick’s eight tracks: “Yoko”, a cartoonishly pitched-up message to their girlfriend, JT of City Girls; a previously unreleased track (“223”) from the much-teased Barter 16 sessions; and “London”, a bonus track delivered in a spot-on English accent.