Remembering Juice WRLD: 1 Year After His Death
With how crazy 2020 has been, it’s almost hard to believe that only a year ago from today, we lost Juice WRLD. In 2019, 6 days removed from his birthday, it was reported by TMZ that Jarad Anthony Higgins — Juice WRLD’s real name — suffered a seizure after landing in Chicago’s Midway airport and was pronounced dead a short time later at the hospital. He was only 21 years old.
Juice’s loss was devastating to the Hip-Hop community — a community that was already coping with the loss of artists like Mac Miller, Nipsey Hussle, & XXXTentacion. Juice was already considered one of Hip-Hop’s BIGGEST artists in just a short amount of time and was poised to dominate the next decade or two of music. Although met with mixed reviews, the last album he dropped during his lifetime — Death Race for Love —debuted at number one on Billboard 200 with 165,000 album-equivalent units for the first week.
t’s one thing to be praised by fans, friends, and family. But to earn your peers' respect is a whole other ball game, and Juice did just that. Some of Hip-Hop’s biggest stars, such as Eminem, J. Cole, and Young Thug, have praised Juice’s freestyle talent.
In a 2019 interview with No Jumper’s Adam22, Young Thug spoke highly of Juice WRLD — comparing the Chicago rapper to a 2006-2009 [peak era] Lil Wayne.
“[Juice WRLD is] probably like that 2006 to 2009 Lil Wayne. He that nigga. So I be trying to make him, like, I watched all Wayne’s mistakes. The shit that had something to do with him was a mistake that ain’t even had nothing to do with him. I just see the story of all of that. I watch all them mistakes and try not to make them. That’s why my relationship is so tight with [Juice WRLD]. I look at him like that — like damn, bro, you really, goddam. Because this nigga really can freestyle. He really don’t write. If you give him a subject, he’ll rap right now. He’s going to say metaphors, and he’s going to say punchlines. It’s going to be like: “You got something you wrote.” No. Nigga rap about Pikachu.”
“He knows too much. He knows all the fucking Dragon Ball Z characters. This nigga know all the Nickelodeon shows. He knows everything that’s ever happened on TV for kids, these niggas get in tune with. That’s why they videos… He’s just one of the ones. He’s smart as a motherfucker. He’ll never run out of nothing to say because he’s that smart.”
— Young Thug
Juice brought a unique sound to the game. While artists like Lil Peep, Lil Uzi Vert, and XXXTentacion were credited with the birth of the “SoundCloud/Emo Rap,” Juice was able to build upon the foundation of that same sub-genre through his melodic melodies & hypnotic hooks.
In 2017, Juice WRLD quietly uploaded “Lucid Dreams” and “All Girls Are The Same” on SoundCloud. Little did he know, those two songs were going to launch him into superstardom, with Lucid Dreams eventually becoming his BIGGEST hit with over 1 billion streams. After reaching the ears of record label executives, Juice would sign with Interscope Records in 2018, while also becoming the most like, steamed, and reposted artist of that year.
That same year, the world would also lose Florida’s fastest-rising artist, XXXTentacion. Shortly after Jahseh Onfroy — the real name of XXXTentacion — was gunned down in June 2018, Juice WRLD would go on to honor X and Lil Peep — another artist who had recently died in 2017 due to an overdose — in his song “Legends.” It is in this song that Juice states the following:
“What’s the 27 Club? / We ain’t making it past 21”
”They tell me I’ma be a legend / I don’t want that title now / ‘Cause all the legends seem to die out.”
Now, a year after his death, the song hits differently. DJ Scheme, friend and collaborator of both Juice and X, has recently confirmed that an XXXTentacion and Juice WRLD track does exist, in the form of a remix to XXXTentacion’s “whoa (mind in awe).”
“I was chilling with Juice and he’s like, ‘yo listen to this’. It was a remix of “Whoa” on Skins and it sounded— it was awesome,” DJ Scheme recounted. “A really beautiful song. I forgot about it because he played me a million songs a day and it’s like wow, super dope. So I just didn’t think anything of it and it was during that period where X’s music— the two [posthumous] projects had come out already. He was like, ‘yeah we did this a while ago, I just haven’t played it for anyone and yeah listen to it, you’re the only person I want to hear it.’ So I fucking listened to it; it was dope.”
— DJ Scheme
It was no secret that Juice had been struggling with drug addiction. A few weeks after his untimely death, Juice WRLD’s autopsy report would go on to reveal that the Chicago rapper’s cause of death was an accidental overdose of Oxycodone and codeine. This made listening to his first posthumous album, Legends Never Die, a difficult task.
The album showed us a glimpse into Juice WRLD's mind, leaving him vulnerable to his fans and supporters. By opening up about his substance abuse, anxiety, and depression — Juice wanted to let his fans know that they were not alone. Lil Bibby, head of Juice WRLD’s Grade A label, stated that “the album would be representative of somebody that was fighting addiction, anxiety, and detachment” and hoped that listeners would hear it and seek help.
The album was met with positive reviews and debuted at number one on Billboard Top 200 with almost 500k album-equivalent units for the first week. Juice also became the third artist to debut with five entries simultaneously in the top 10 of Billboard 100, behind The Beatles and Drake.
Juice WRLD accomplished many things during his short time here in the rap game. His debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance (2018) went platinum, and he dropped a collaborative album with Future in the form of WRLD on Drugs (2018). Juice landed himself a number one debut album in 2019 with Death Race for Love. He’s earned his peers' respect through his unique sound and his insanely talented freestyling ability. In 2020, he was also the fourth most-streamed artist on Spotify, with 5.9 billion streams to close out the year. Yet, this all feels bittersweet because Juice WRLD should be here on Earth celebrating his accomplishments. Long Live Juice. Long Live Jarad.
See how celebrities reacted to Juice WRLD’s death below.