Juice WRLD
Jarad Higgins turned a freestyle habit and a guitar-loop aesthetic into one of the largest audiences in rap, and died at twenty-one with an archive so large that posthumous releases have continued for years.
Early life and origins in Chicago
He grew up in Homewood and Calumet Park, in Chicago's southern suburbs. He learned piano, drums and guitar as a child, in a strict household where his mother restricted the rap he could listen to — which is a large part of why his influences ran to rock and emo as much as to hip-hop.
How he got started
He uploaded to SoundCloud from around 2015, initially as JuicetheKidd. "All Girls Are the Same" and then "Lucid Dreams" — built on an interpolation of Sting's "Shape of My Heart" — travelled fast and got him signed to Interscope in a deal reported at the time as one of the largest given to an unproven artist.
Album discography
Goodbye & Good Riddance (2018), Death Race for Love (2019), which debuted at number one, and the posthumous Legends Never Die (2020) and Fighting Demons (2021). He also released WRLD on Drugs with Future in 2018.
Notable songs
"Lucid Dreams", "All Girls Are the Same", "Robbery", "Righteous", "Bandit" with NBA YoungBoy, and "Come & Go" with Marshmello.
What he was known for musically
Freestyling. He wrote very little down and recorded enormous quantities in single takes, which is why the posthumous archive is so deep. The songs pair melodic, sung hooks with lyrics about addiction, heartbreak and mental health, delivered without any of the distancing irony the subject usually attracts.
His death
He died on 8 December 2019 at Chicago's Midway Airport, days after his twenty-first birthday, from an accidental overdose of oxycodone and codeine. He had been open about his drug use across his entire catalogue, which made the manner of his death both unsurprising and difficult for his audience to process.
Legacy
He is the central figure in the emo rap wave alongside Lil Peep and XXXTentacion, all three of whom died young. His influence on how a generation of rappers writes about mental health is direct and enormous, and the posthumous releases have kept him commercially present years after his death.
The freestyle method
He recorded almost everything in one take with no written lyrics, often producing several finished songs in a session. Engineers who worked with him have described sessions running for hours with the tape simply left running. That method is why the vault is so large and why the posthumous releases have been able to continue for years without obvious barrel-scraping.
Lucid Dreams
Built on an interpolation of Sting's "Shape of My Heart", it reached number two on the Hot 100 and became one of the defining songs of the late 2010s. Sting receives the substantial majority of the royalties as a result of the interpolation, which became a widely cited example of how sample clearance economics work against young artists.
Posthumous releases
Legends Never Die debuted at number one in July 2020 with one of the largest opening weeks of that year, and Fighting Demons followed in 2021. His estate has continued releasing, and the question of how much unreleased material should reach the public without his say is one his audience argues about openly.
Influence
The melodic, guitar-driven, emotionally explicit style he worked in became one of rap's dominant modes. He, Lil Peep and XXXTentacion are the three figures usually credited with it, and all three died between 2017 and 2019 — a fact that shapes how the whole subgenre is discussed.
Frequently asked
Where is Juice WRLD from?
He grew up in Homewood and Calumet Park, in Chicago's southern suburbs.
How did Juice WRLD get started in rap?
He uploaded to SoundCloud from around 2015, initially as JuicetheKidd.
What happened to Juice WRLD?
He died on 8 December 2019 at Chicago's Midway Airport, days after his twenty-first birthday, from an accidental overdose of oxycodone and codeine. He had been open about his drug use across his entire catalogue, which made the manner of his death both unsurprising and difficult for his audience to process.
What is Juice WRLD known for musically?
He is the central figure in the emo rap wave alongside Lil Peep and XXXTentacion, all three of whom died young. His influence on how a generation of rappers writes about mental health is direct and enormous, and the posthumous releases have kept him commercially present years after his death.