I ask Uzi what compelled him to start posting fit pics.

“Um, I don't know. I always wanted to do that, but I just didn't have a lot of clothes before,” he says. Uzi explains that he once thought he had style because he was more advanced than the guys around him. And then: “It was like when you come to the last level and you open the door and it's, like, a whole new world—not even a new level but a whole new world. You're like, ‘Wait a minute. You're telling me I can't buy all this stuff out the store, I have to get archival stuff?’ Oh, shit! I'm losing.”

He adds, “But I'm not losing anymore, though.”

When I ask him about his fondness for womenswear, Uzi explains that he was always small for his age, so he would rock his mom's skinny jeans with Etnies around 2006 or 2007. “I had to,” he says, because other jeans wouldn't fit. “The women's section is waaaay better than the men's section. Always. The women's section, you usually don't have to get things tailored. It's usually just on point.”

The old notions of gendered dressing don't seem to exist in Uzi's universe: He'll wear Cactus Plant Flea Market motocross suits with Chanel purses, slinky Jean Paul Gaultier tops (archival, of course) with The Soloist jackets. He'll rock Gucci women's skinny jeans printed with strawberries that look straight out of a Taylor Swift music video. When Uzi was mercilessly meme'd online for wearing an Avril Lavigne-ish off-the-shoulder boatneck sweater with a red Goyard purse, rather than stop carrying purses, he bought dozens more. It's no wonder commenters have labeled him “the baddest bitch” on Instagram.

Vest, $13,500, by Dior Men / Pants, $755, by Ludovic de Saint Sernin / His own boots, by Chanel / Bandanna, stylist’s own / His own watch, by Audemars Piguet

The next day, during his GQ photo shoot at a Key Food in Brooklyn, everything is put on hold so Uzi can go on a different kind of shopping spree. This is triggered by his discovery of Entenmann's Little Bites “Party Cakes” flavor, which, according to Uzi, “you can't find all the time.” He describes himself as “the fakest pescatarian,” whose aversion to meat is more a function of his abiding love of junk food. As his crew struggles to keep up, Uzi tears through the aisles, grabbing Flavor Blasted pizza Goldfish here and $1.75 pound cakes there, periodically tossing items into his bodyguard's basket. When I ask one of his friends if this is what shopping for clothes with Uzi is like, he nods wearily. “Yup.”

Many of Uzi's fans believe that the rapper's fashion obsession distracts him from music, as any scroll through his Instagram comments makes clear. When we speak, it has been 653 days—an eternity in the streaming age—since he released his last album, Luv Is Rage 2. He has just canceled a string of European festival dates, and his follow-up record, Eternal Atake, has been delayed once again; when asked about it, Uzi shrugs and says he wanted to release it that month but that he wasn't done adding to it. This past January, Uzi feinted at quitting music altogether, reportedly amid disagreements with his label. He posted an Instagram story announcing he was throwing in the towel: “I DELETED EVERYTHING I WANNA BE NORMAL … I WANNA WAKE UP IN 2013,” he wrote as a caption. Above it was a photo of his feet, which were clad in sheer Fiorucci socks layered over a pair of Gucci socks.

Between snaps in the supermarket, I ask him how important music is to the Lil Uzi Vert project. He's wearing a black Louis Vuitton bomber with a fur collar, tactical cargo pants, and Air Jordan baseball cleats that click-clack across the pavement—a perfectly deranged Uzi fit. (For the shoot, he worked with stylist Simon Rasmussen, a first and—as Uzi said—a last: “This will be the only time I ever do this. I'm never ever doing this again. Like, ever. And not because of this experience! This is a good experience, I'm chillin'. But I usually just one-time things.”)