Welcome back to the Deep Dive. I have to be honest
with you, I spent the last 48 hours just living
inside the source material we pulled for today,
and I feel like I've just walked out of a very
loud, very emotional concert that ended way,
way too abruptly. That's a good way to put it.
My ears are still ringing, and my heart is kind
of heavy. That is probably the most accurate
way to describe the experience of digging into
the life and the very sudden death of Jared Anthony
Higgins. Though the world, and I think history
at this point, knows him as Juice World. Right.
The voice that essentially defined a generation
of heartbreak. But here is the thing that kept
hitting me as I was reading through these files,
and I want to get your take on this immediately.
We usually talk about career trajectories in
terms of decades. Yeah, the slow burn. You know,
the drill. The 10 -year struggle in the underground,
the slow breakthrough, the peak years, the gradual
decline. With Juice World, we are looking at
a story that is compressed into, what, two years?
Essentially, yes. It is a story of extreme velocity.
It is a timeline that moves so fast it almost
blurs when you look at it closely. And that's
the hook for me today, the sheer speed of it.
We were talking about a kid recording on a cracked
iPhone in a high school hallway, and then you
blink. Literally. It feels like you blink. And
he's signing a $3 million deal with Interscope.
It is a meteoric rise in the truest, most literal
sense of the word. Meteoric is the right word.
Because meteors burn incredibly bright, they
move faster than anything else in the sky. And
often, well, they crash. And that is the other
side of this paradox we have to look at. The
crash. The tragedy. Exactly. Balanced against
that astronomical one in a billion success is
a lifelong, very public and very visceral battle
with addiction. A battle that ended his life
at the deeply young age of 21. 21. It's a number
that just, it hangs there. So our mission today,
and I want to be clear to you listening right
now, this isn't just a biography. We aren't just
going to list dates and albums and say, and then
this happened. No, that would be a disservice
to the complexity of who he was. We're going
to unpack the phenomenon. We need to understand
SoundCloud rap and emo rap, not just as buzzwords
people throw around, but as actual cultural shifts.
We need to talk about his process, which, honestly,
reading about it, it defies the laws of physics.
It defies the logic of how we think music is
made. It completely upends the traditional songwriting
manual. And finally, we have to navigate the
legacy. Because even though he passed in 2019,
the business of Juice WRLD is booming. There
are massive questions here about posthumous albums,
about the ethics of finishing a dead artist's
work, and how we manage the art of someone who
isn't here to say yes or no. And we have a massive
stack of sources today. Biographies, police reports,
discography notes, interviews, estate filings,
the whole nine yards. It's a lot to get through.
So buckle up. Let's dive in. Let's do it. I want
to start with the geography. Because usually
when we talk about Chicago hip hop, we have a
very specific image in our minds. We think of
the South Side. We think of drill music. We think
of Chief Keef. We think of grit and concrete.
Right. Aggressive, nihilistic beats. Music that
reflects a very specific, very hard reality.
But Jared Higgins, he is a little different.
He was born in the city proper, December 2nd,
1998. But he didn't stay there. No. His family
moved. They moved to the south suburbs. Homewood,
Illinois. Homewood Flossmoor. Now, for people
who aren't from the Chicagoland area, help us
place that. Is that the hood? Not exactly. I
mean, it's a suburb. It's middle class to working
class. It's very diverse, but it's distinct from
the inner city. It's a place with good schools
like Homewood Flossmoor High, which is actually
known for its arts programs. OK, so it's a totally
different environment from the one that birthed
drill music. Completely. And that distinction
matters. It really, really matters for his. sound
and the home life was different too this wasn't
a chaotic household in the traditional sense
it was a single parent home yes his parents divorced
when he was just three years old yeah which is
a pivotal age for any child And sadly, his father
passed away later, in June 2019, just months
before Jarrett himself died. But for the vast
majority of his life, he was raised by his mother,
Carmela Wallace. And Carmela sounds like a force
of nature in the source material. She was. And
she was extremely religious, a very conservative
Christian. The sources mention a specific rule
she had in the house, which I found fascinating,
considering who her son became. No hip -hop.
Right. The future king of SoundCloud rap wasn't
allowed to listen to rap. Explicitly forbidden.
She felt the lyrics were too violent, too misogynistic,
just generally destructive. She wanted to protect
him from that influence. She wanted a, you know,
a holy household. That is such a classic parenting
backfire moment, isn't it? You ban the thing
and it becomes the forbidden fruit. Oh, 100%.
It becomes the most interesting thing in the
world. But it also did something else. Something
unintentional but crucial for his artistry. It
forced him to look for music elsewhere. Exactly.
If he couldn't listen to Jay -Z or 50 Cent in
the living room, what was left? Video games.
The loophole. The ultimate 90s and early 2000s
loophole. I love this detail because it makes
me feel so seen. He discovered music through
Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and Guitar Hero. Think
about those soundtracks for a second. If you
grew up in that era, those playlists are burned
into your brain. Oh, I can hear them right now.
Goldfinger, Rage Against the Machine. Blank 182.
Panic, At the Disco, Black Sabbath, Megadeth,
Billy Idol. This was a curriculum of rock, pop
punk, and heavy metal. It was a whole education.
So while other kids in Chicago are absorbing
the rhythmic patterns of trap music or the storytelling
of Nas, Gerard is subconsciously memorizing pop
punk chord progressions and heavy metal riffs.
He is internalizing melody. He's learning about
angst, but a specific type of suburban rock and
roll angst. The nobody understands me, I'm all
alone themes of emo music. This explains so much
about his future sound. When people ask, why
was Juice WRLD so melodic? Why did he sing as
much as he rapped? Why did he sound like that?
It's because his foundational education was Billy
Idol, not Biggie Smalls. And he wasn't just a
passive listener. This is key. He wasn't just
consuming this stuff. He was dissecting it. No,
he was an active participant from a very young
age. He was a multi -instrumentalist by the time
he was in grade school. The sources say piano
at age four. Age four. His mother paid for lessons.
Then he picks up the guitar on his own. Then
the drums. Then the trumpet for the school band.
So let's debunk a myth right away. There is this
criticism of SoundCloud rappers from the old
guard that they're just kids with laptops who
don't know music, who just mumble over beats.
Right, the mumble rap stigma, that they have
no musicality. But Jared Higgins had music theory
in his blood. He understood structure. He understood
chords. He knew how to build a song before he
ever learned how to record one. He understood
harmony. He understood rhythm from a drummer's
perspective. That is a massive, massive advantage.
However, while this musical prodigy is developing,
there is a shadow growing right alongside it.
And we have to address this early on because
it is not something that happened after the fame.
It started way before. The substance abuse. The
sources are startlingly... clear and frankly
very disturbing on this. He started drinking
lean in the sixth grade. Sixth grade. I mean,
pause on that. That is an 11 or 12 year old child.
Yes. For you listening, you might not be familiar
with the terminology. What exactly is lean? We
hear it in rap songs all the time, but what is
it chemically? It is a mixture of prescription
grade cough syrup, specifically containing codeine
and promethazine. usually mixed with soda like
Sprite and often hard candy like Jolly Ranchers
to sweeten the taste. So it's an opioid cocktail.
It's a powerful opioid cocktail. It is a downer.
It slows your heart rate, gives you a feeling
of euphoria and detachment. And he's doing this
at age 12. And by 2013, his freshman or sophomore
year of high school, he has moved on to Percocet
and Xanax. These are heavy, heavy pharmaceuticals.
And these aren't party drugs in the same way.
Xanax is a benzodiazepine for anxiety. Percocet.
is a powerful opioid painkiller. Exactly. Why?
Do the sources give us any insight into the why?
Was it just peer pressure? Was it trying to look
cool? It is complex. I mean, there is the peer
element, sure. He was around other kids who were
experimenting. But there is also a clear thread
of self -medication that runs through his whole
story. He talked later about anxiety, about feeling
overwhelmed. He wasn't just partying. He was
trying to numb something inside him. It's just
heartbreaking. You have this brilliant, talented
kid, and he is already chemically dependent.
before he can even drive a car. And yet, there
is this weird duality in his teenage years. He
was smoking cigarettes, right? A pack a day.
Pretty heavy. But the sources say he quit smoking
his senior year because of health issues. Wait.
He quit cigarettes for his health, but he was
popping Xanax. It shows the rationalization of
addiction, doesn't it? It's a very common psychological
pattern. How so? You cut out the bad thing that
makes you cough or affects your stamina for basketball,
but you keep the medicine that makes you feel
mentally okay, even if it is physically destroying
you in a much more insidious way. So we have
the tension building, the strict religious mom,
the hidden drug use, the rock and roll influences.
And then around 2015, his sophomore year, he
starts trying to get his voice out there. Enter
Juice the Kid. Juice the Kid. One word. Where
did the name come from? It is a callback to the
1992 film Juice, starring Tupac Shakur. Tupac,
okay. Now, Tupac was a massive influence on it.
That's huge. But specifically, the character
Bishop in that movie, the haircut, the attitude,
Gerard identified with that rebellious energy.
And eventually, he modifies it. He drops the
kid and adds world, but spelled W -R -L -L -D.
Which he said stood for world. It represented
his ambition of taking over the world. Which
is incredibly ambitious for a kid recording in
his bedroom, but also sort of prophetic. Totally.
And let's talk about that recording setup, because
this is the birth of the SoundCloud aesthetic.
He wasn't going to professional studios in downtown
Chicago. He was using his phone, right. Literally
his smartphone. He would find beats online, often
leasing them for $20 or $30 from producers he
met on the internet, and he would record his
vocals directly into the phone. Sometimes he'd
use the white Apple headphones with the little
microphone on the cord. That explains that gritty,
slightly distorted, almost lo -fi sound that
became his signature. Exactly. In high -fidelity
audio, distortion is a mistake. In SoundCloud
rap, distortion is an emotion. It sounds raw.
It sounds urgent. It sounds like he is right
next to you, whispering in your ear or screaming
in his car. So he is uploading these tracks.
He graduates high school in 2017. And now he
hits that classic crossroads, the what do you
do with your life moment that everyone faces.
He needed money. Music wasn't paying the bills
yet. So he gets a job. A factory job. a car parts
factory, I believe. And this is my favorite detail
of his brief fame life because it is so relatable.
He lasted exactly two weeks. He realized immediately,
I am not built for this. He was dissatisfied,
maybe a bit depressed by the monotony of it.
He essentially got himself fired or just walked
out so he could focus 100 % on music. That is
a terrifying leap of faith. to look at a steady,
if boring, paycheck and say, no, I'm going to
bet on my voice memos. It is, but it paid off
almost instantly. He joined this internet collective
called Internet Money. Which is huge in the producer
world. Run by Taz Taylor and Nick Mira. Massive.
It is a hub for beat makers and artists. It gave
him a community. It gave him access to better
beats. And in June 2017, he releases his debut
EP, 999. 999. That number became his logo. He
had it tattooed. It was on his merch. What did
it mean? It is an inversion of 666. If 666 is
the mark of the beast of evil, of negativity,
999 is taking whatever bad situation you're in,
whatever demons you have, and flipping them into
something positive. That was his entire philosophy.
It was. And that EP had a song on it, a song
that would change everything. It was called Lucid
Dreams. Which brings us to section two, The Meteoric
Rise, 2018. The year the world caught fire. If
2017 was the simmer, 2018 was the explosion.
It all happened so fast. So walk us through the
mechanics of this rise. Because it doesn't start
with a record label. It starts with a blog, right?
It starts with Lyrical Lemonade. And a guy named
Cole Bennett. We have to explain Cole Bennett
to you if you aren't deep in this world. In 2018,
if you were a rapper, Cole Bennett wasn't just
a video director. He was a kingmaker. A tastemaker.
He ran a blog and a YouTube channel called Lyrical
Lemonade. His videos had a very specific style.
Colorful, trippy, with cartoonish effects and
quick edits. If he directed your video, you were
guaranteed millions of views. It was like a cheat
code for the music industry. It was a guaranteed
cosign. So Juice releases an EP called Nothing's
Different in late 2017. It has a song on it called
All Girls Are the Same. Lyrical Lemonade picks
it up. Cole Bennett reaches out. They shoot the
video in February 2018. And I've seen that video.
It is so simple, but it is so charismatic. It's
just him in this trippy room and you can't take
your eyes off him. And the industry reaction
was instantaneous. A bidding war started. Every
major label wanted him. And Interscope Records
won. For $3 million. I want to be the skeptic
here for a second. $3 million. For a 19 -year
-old kid with a couple of SoundCloud hits. Does
that make business sense? In 2018, yes. Because
streaming was taking over, the labels realized
that these kids on SoundCloud had built in fanatical
fan bases. They didn't need radio play. They
didn't need MTV. They already had the numbers.
So Interscope wasn't paying for potential. No,
they were buying an existing movement. They were
buying a sure thing. And then they officially
re -released Lucid Dreams as a single in May.
And it becomes ubiquitous. It was everywhere.
It peaked at number two on the Billboard Hot
100. By January 2020, it had over a billion streams
on Spotify alone. Let's break down Lucid Dreams
musically. Right. Why did it work? Why did it
cross over from hip -hop fans to pop fans to
rock fans? It is the perfect synthesis of all
his influences we just talked about. It's all
there. It's built around a sample of Sting's...
Which is a beautiful, melancholic, very sophisticated
guitar riff. Right. So you have this classic
adult contemporary pop sample, but then the producer,
Nick Mira from Internet Money, puts these rattling
trap hi -hats and a Fivvy 808 bass under it.
So it is rock meets trap, pop meets hip -hop.
And then Juice's vocal. He isn't rapping in a
monotone. He is wailing. I still see your shadows
in my room. It is pure, distilled teenage angst.
it resonated with everyone who had ever had a
breakup now this is the part that blows my mind
we have the hit song we have the debut album
goodbye and good riddance which comes out in
may 2018 but the way he made these songs tell
us about the no writing rule This is the key
insight into his genius, and it's something people
really struggle to comprehend. Higgins stated
later that Lucid Dreams was the only track on
that entire album that he wrote down on paper
or in his phone. The only one. Out of the whole
album, all those hits. The only one. Every other
song, All Girls Are the Same, Lean With Me, Wasted,
was done impromptu, freestyled. Explain that
process to me, because when I think of freestyling,
I think of someone at a party trying to rhyme
cat with bat and stumbling. This is fully structured
songwriting with choruses versus bridges. It
is a process called punching in. He would go
into the booth. The producer plays the beat.
Juice listens for maybe 30 seconds, just gets
a feel for it. Then he tells the engineer to
hit record. He does two lines, stops. The engineer
keeps it. He listens back, thinks for a second,
then does the next two lines, stops. So he is
building the song brick by brick in real time.
Exactly. He is composing the melody, the lyrics,
the flow, and the harmonies simultaneously off
the top of his head. He said if he was alone,
he'd do it into his voice memo so he wouldn't
forget the idea. So he is composing and performing
at the exact same time. Yes. It is a pure flow
state. He described it as just letting the emotion
out without a filter. If he stopped to write
it down, he felt he would overthink it. He felt
it would lose its purity. That requires a level
of cognitive processing speed that is actually
scary. It's like his brain was a supercomputer
for melody. It is why he was so prolific. Most
artists take weeks to write a song. Juice could
record five, six, seven fully finished songs
in a single night. But 2018 wasn't just a victory
lap. It was also a year of tragedy for the specific
community he was part of. The SoundCloud scene
was incredibly fragile. In November 2017, just
as Juice was starting to bubble, Lil Peep...
died of an overdose. Who was arguably the pioneer
of this emo rap sound. He was. He laid the groundwork.
And then in June 2018, right after Goodbye and
Good Riddance came out, XXXTentacion was murdered
in Florida. And Juice knew them, right? Or at
least knew of them. He looked up to them. He
was becoming friends with X. The sources say
they were actually planning to meet up for the
first time. Wow. So when X died, Juice released
a two -song EP called Too Soon. It was an immediate
reaction. The cover art was literally a screenshot
of his text messages with ex -excentation talking
about supporting each other. That is so raw.
It is like grieving in real time on the internet
for millions of people to see. And that brings
us to the genre itself. We keep saying emo rap.
In 2018, Spotify named it the fastest growing
genre on its platform. But what is it, really?
Yeah, because to an older listener, emo means
My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy. And rap
means Tupac. Mixing them sounds like oil and
water. But musically, it makes perfect sense.
Both genres are about high emotion. Both are
about being an outsider. Both are about heartbreak.
Juice WRLD was the bridge. He took the aesthetics
of emo, the vocal melodies, the lyrics about
depression, the singing, and put them over trap
beats. Did he like the label? Did he want to
be called an emo rapper? He had a nuanced take
on it. On one hand, he didn't want to be boxed
in. He famously said, I don't make emo rap, I
make music. But he also acknowledged the core
truth of it. He believed music needed to be dark
because, in his words, the world isn't a light
or happy place. He wasn't trying to sell a party
fantasy? No. Even his upbeat songs have this
undercurrent of sadness or anxiety to them. We
talked about his rock influences. But his hip
hop influences are interesting, too. He cited
Kanye West as a major one. Specifically the album
808s and Heartbreak. Which came out in 2008 when
Juice was, what, 10 years old? Yeah. And Juice
called Kanye a time traveler for making that
album. Because if you listen to 808s today, the
heavy auto -tune singing, the raw vulnerability,
the focus on loss and heartbreak. It basically
predicted Juice WRLD's entire career 10 years
early. It laid the blueprint. It absolutely did.
And Juice took that blueprint and added the punk
rock ethos of Billy Idol and the grit of Chief
Keef. It was a unique cocktail. Let's talk about
the lyrical themes, because this is where the
connection with the audience really happened.
He wasn't just rapping about how much money he
had. Well, sometimes he was. But mostly he was
rapping about how much he was hurting. Vulnerability
is the key word. He talked about addiction not
as a cool party trick, but as a case. as a trap
he couldn't escape. The song Lean Wit Me is the
perfect example of this. It is almost a public
service announcement set to a trap beat. The
music video is literally him at an Alcoholics
Anonymous meeting. He sings, told her if I die,
I'ma die young. He was hyper aware of his own
mortality. And that is the thing that makes listening
to him now so difficult. He was telling us what
was going to happen. He was screaming it from
the rooftops. He was turning his struggle into
art that millions of kids could relate to, hoping
it would help them, even if he couldn't save
himself. And before we move on, I want to emphasize
that his freestyling wasn't just for the studio.
He would go on. radio shows, Tim Westwood in
the UK, Funk Flex in New York, and just go for
an hour straight. Over classic boom bap beats,
Eminem beats, Nas beats, he proved he could wrap
circles around traditional MCs. He valued that
duality being the sad boy singer for his albums
and the lyrical monster on the radio. He had
to prove he was the complete package. He did.
He shut up all the critics who said he couldn't
really rap. So we move into the height of his
fame. 2018 turns into 2019. He is arguably the
biggest new artist in the world. He is inescapable.
He drops a collaborative mixtape with Future
called World on Drugs. Which is a huge cosign.
Future's a titan of the genre. Exactly. Then
he's on No Bystanders with Travis Scott on Astroworld,
one of the biggest albums of the decade. He's
collaborating with BTS, the biggest band in the
world, with RM and Suga. He's working with Ellie
Goulding and Benny Blanco on pop hits. He is
crossing over into pop, K -pop, electronic. And
he goes on tour with Nicki Minaj. The Nicki World
Tour, a massive European arena tour. He was her
co -headliner. And this is where we have to talk
about the lifestyle. Because the pressure of
touring, I don't think people realize what that
does to a person physically and mentally. It
is absolutely grueling. You are in a different
city every night. You are performing for thousands
of people, giving them all your energy. Then
you get on a bus or a plane. You don't sleep.
Your body clock is a mess. And if you are already
struggling with anxiety and addiction. The drugs.
Become the only way to cope. They become a tool
for the job. You take uppers to get on stage,
downers to sleep. It is a vicious, vicious cycle.
His personal life was also incredibly complicated
during this time. He was living in Los Angeles
with his girlfriend, Allie Lottie. They had a
very intense, very public relationship. You could
see it all on Instagram. They were always together.
But there was deep tragedy there, too, behind
the scenes. The sources mention this, and it's
just awful. Lottie revealed later in interviews
that she was pregnant with Higgins' baby on three
separate occasions. Three times. Three times.
And all three resulted in miscarriages. My God.
She attributed it to the stress of their lifestyles,
the constant movement, the chaos, the drugs.
Imagine dealing with that level of grief while
having to smile for cameras every day and perform
for 20 ,000 people. It's an unimaginable amount
of pressure. And the addiction was ramping up.
Everyone around him could see it. He was getting
out of control. But here is the glimmer of hope
that makes the end so much more bitter. The sources
note that Higgins had actually agreed to go to
rehab. He was going to go. Yes. His team had
intervened. He had agreed to it just weeks prior
to his death. He knew he was in too deep. He
wanted to get clean. But he never made it. He
never made it. That brings us to December 8,
2019, the day everything stopped. It is a timeline
that has been scrutinized heavily through police
reports and witness interviews. Higgins was aboard
a private Gulfstream jet. They were flying from
Van Moys Airport in Los Angeles back home to
Chicago. He was heading home for his birthday
party, essentially, a delayed celebration. He
had just turned 21 on December 2nd. So he was
six days into being 21 years old. But this wasn't
a normal flight. Law enforcement was waiting
for them. No. Federal agents had been notified
that there were suspected guns and drugs on board.
We don't know exactly who tipped them off. The
sources suggest it was the pilot, which is standard
procedure if they see illegal activity. But the
police were waiting at Midway Airport. So the
plane lands. They taxi to a private hangar. Yeah.
And the police are there. They board the plane.
They start searching luggage. And they find a
lot. 70 pounds of marijuana. 32 kilograms. Vacuum
-sealed bags in multiple suitcases, along with
several handguns and high -capacity magazines.
Now, 70 pounds. That is not for personal use.
That is a significant amount that's a trafficking
charge. It is. But that is a legal issue. That
is not a fatal issue. His security guards were
likely going to take the charge for the guns.
He probably would have gotten a fine for the
weed. No. The fatality comes from what happened
during the search. According to witnesses from
his team and the police reports, while the agents
were searching the bags, Higgins took and swallowed
several pills. The narrative has always been
that he swallowed them to hide them from the
cops? Yeah. Is that true? That was the initial
theory, panic swallowing. It seemed logical.
But his videographer, Chris Long, who was on
the plane, disputed that later. He said Juice
didn't care about the police finding a few pills
when they already had 70 pounds of weed. He implied
it was just usage. Or maybe a mix of panic and
addiction. We'll never know his exact intent.
But we know the pills were Percocet. Yes. Multiple
Percocet pills. A powerful opioid. And the biological
result is not up for debate. No. He started convulsing.
He went into a seizure right there on the tarmac
inside the hangar. Did they try to save him?
They did. The federal agents actually administered
Narcan, which they carry for situations like
this. Narcan is the overdose reversal drug. Naloxone.
Right. They gave him two doses. And according
to the reports, he did wake up briefly, but he
was incoherent. He was immediately transported
to Advocate Christ Medical Center in Oakland.
And he was pronounced dead. At 3 .14 a .m. Just
gone. The autopsy report came out later. What
was the official cause? Toxic levels of oxycodone
and codeine in his system. It was ruled an accidental
overdose. The reaction from the music world was...
It was just a gut punch. It was like the air
was sucked out of the room. Drake, The Weeknd,
Chance the Rapper, everyone posted tributes immediately.
It felt like the entire industry stopped for
a day. I remember there was some anger, too.
Rapper Boosie Badazz went on this rant. Yeah,
Boosie blamed the pilot. He called him a snitch.
He basically said if the pilot hadn't called
the cops, Juice wouldn't have panicked and he
wouldn't be dead. He later walked that back,
realizing it's more complex, but it showed how
angry people were. They wanted someone to blame
for an unspeakable tragedy. And then there was
the eeriness of his own lyrics. It was inescapable.
The song Legends. He wrote it in memory of Lil
Peep and XX Tentation. What's the 27 Club? We
ain't making it past 21. It is one of the most
haunting, prophetic lines in modern music history.
He didn't just sing it, he lived it. and died
by it. So Jared Higgins is gone. But this brings
us to the final and perhaps most complex part
of our deep dive, the aftermath. Because Juice
WRLD, the artist, he didn't stop. In fact, commercially,
he got bigger, much bigger. Let's look at the
first posthumous album, Legends Never Die, released
in July 2020. The numbers are staggering. It
debuted at number one. That was expected. But
listen to this. Five songs from that album were
in the Billboard Hot 100 top 10 simultaneously.
Dive at once in the top 10. Yes. The only other
artists to ever do that in the history of the
chart are the Beatles and Drake. That puts him
in the rarest of air. That's God tier. In 2020,
the year after he died, he was streamed over
5 .9 billion times on Spotify. He was the fourth
most streamed artist globally, above many living
superstars. Why? Why did the popularity grow
so much after the death? I think the death validated
the lyrics. When he was alive and he sang about
dying young, it was sad, it was art. When he
actually died young, those songs became sacred
texts. They became prophecies. Fans felt like
he died for them in a weird way. He was the martyr
of their generation's anxiety. And the estate
run by his mother and the record label? has kept
the content coming there's another album fighting
demons in december 2021 this one was tied to
an hbo documentary juice world into the abyss
i saw that it is incredibly hard to watch it
is it uses tons of archival behind -the -scenes
footage to show the drug use in graphic unflinching
detail it doesn't glamorize it at all it's a
very stark look at his mental health struggles
and the releases just keep coming Girl of My
Dreams with Suga from BTS got him his first number
one on the digital song sales chart. And they've
announced a final studio album, The Party Never
Ends. And even recently, late 2024, they are
still innovating the Fortnite collaboration.
This is fascinating to me. Epic Games added Juice
WRLD as a playable character, a skin, in Fortnite.
They did a virtual concert inside the game. Some
people find that dystopian. A digital ghost performing
for kids in a video game. It is a big black mirror.
It is. But you can also see the other side of
it. It introduces him to a 12 -year -old today
who might have been too young to know him in
2018. It keeps the legacy alive for a new generation.
But amidst all the commerce, the skins, the streams,
the posthumous albums, there is one part of the
legacy that feels truly pure. The live free 999
fund. This is his mother's work, Carmella Wallace.
Tell us about that. She established the funds
to support programs for young, underserved populations,
specifically focusing on addiction, anxiety,
and depression. She's using the profits from
his estate to fund this. She could have hidden
the cause of death. She could have said heart
failure to avoid the stigma. A lot of families
do. Right. But she didn't. She leaned into it.
Her goal is to normalize the conversation about
mental health and addiction. She wants to say,
my son struggled, and if you are struggling,
it is okay to get help. It is about turning that
999 concept into real world action. It's an incredible
act of grace, really. So as we wrap up, we have
looked at a life that was short, fast, brilliant,
and tragic. The ultimate paradox. A kid who wasn't
allowed to listen to hip hop, who ended up changing
the sound of hip hop forever. He made it okay
to be vulnerable. That is the key takeaway, I
think. He told the toughest kids in the room
that it was okay to cry. He gave a voice to a
generation's pain. I want to leave you with a
provocative thought, something for you to chew
on. We talked about his process, the freestyling,
the no writing. Because of that workflow, he
was a machine. Reports and leaks suggest there
are thousands of unreleased Juice WRLD songs
in a vault somewhere. Just sitting on hard drives,
complete songs, rough demos, voice memos. In
this new era of AI. where we can recreate voices
with perfect clarity and with this massive backlog
of unfinished demos, who gets to decide what
is a Juice WRLD song now? It is the great ethical
dilemma of the modern music industry, and he
is case study number one. Do we let a producer
finish a beat? Do we let an AI clean up a vocal?
Are we honoring the dead by finishing their work?
Or are we just consuming them? If he didn't put
his final stamp on it, if he didn't say, it's
done, is it art? Or is it just content? That
is the question. Thanks for diving deep with
us today. See you next time.