Legends do die

Before Taylor Swift's latest album shot straight to the top, the biggest deal in US music was rapper Juice WRLD. With his latest album spending a couple of weeks at #1, it was a notable success by all accounts. The fact that it was a posthumous release made it all the more special...

Juice WRLD entered the zeitgeist back in 2018, at the tender age of 19, with “Lucid dreams“, a song that already got streamed over a billion times on Spotify. Based on a Sting sample, the very subdued yet extremely efficient Emo Rap track took over the (virtual) airwaves, and its author quickly became a staple of the growing contemporary Rap/RnB hit making community.

Evident in most of his work is the fact that Juice WRLD, born Jarad Higgins, was a complex and somewhat tortured soul, much in the way folk legend Bob Dylan was in his day, or Led Zeppelin’s Robert Plant harrowing vocals conveyed in the 1970’s. Consequently, his style is much more mellow and reflective than that of many previous Rap stars. And, unsurprisingly although quite sadly, the man had a history of depression as well as substance abuse…

Which brings us to today: while Legends Never Die, his newest album, hit the (also virtual) shelves last month, the young man has tragically already passed away. The accident happened last December, when a private jet carrying him and his entourage got accosted by law enforcement officials at a Chicago airport and the artist swallowed several pills in an apparent effort to hide incriminating evidence. Unfortunately, that intake led to seizures, and Juice WRLD was later pronounced dead from an accidental overdose.

While this sad ending helps tell the tale that one should always be very careful about mental health and substance abuse, even amongst youngsters and no matter how famous, rich or successful they appear to be, it also brings us an interesting collection of songs that will probably have fans excited for a while. And, apparently, there’s more to come: that album title may have been chosen real well…