Remembering Juice WRLD: The SoundCloud rapper who took over the world
It’s been three years since we lost the iconic Juice WRLD. He would have turned 24 today. We look back at the rapper’s life and legacy with a bit about the drug he overdosed on.
Jarad Anthony Higgins was an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. But we all knew him better as Juice WRLD.
Here's a quick retrospective on Juice WRLD:
In January 2020, his family and team at Grade A Productions thanked the fans for their love and support and announced that they would be releasing his music posthumously.
His posthumous singles with Halsey, “Life’s a Mess” and Marshmello, “Come and Go”, preceded his first posthumous album, Legends Never Die. The album debuted at number one on the Billboard 200. Five of its songs reached the top 10 of the Hot 100, making him only the third artist in history to accomplish this feat after Drake and The Beatles.
In November 2021, Higgin’s most recent posthumous album, Fighting Demons, released as an accompaniment to the documentary film Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss, which highlighted his struggles with mental health and substance abuse.
As a child, some of the artists that Higgins was introduced to through video games that served as major inspirations to his artistic style include Billy Idol, Blink-182, Black Sabbath, Fall Out Boy, Megadeth and Panic! at the Disco. Later, he cited Travis Scott, Chief Keef, Kid Cudi, Eminem and Kanye West as his biggest rap influences.
Most of his songs involved an off-the-cuff songwriting process. Instead of writing the song down, he preferred hearing the beat and instantaneously conceiving ideas through his freestyles.
Higgins personified the emo-rap genre but was best known for his genre-bending musical styles that featured auto-tuned vocals and short, hook-heavy songs.
His early work featured emotionally vulnerable lyrics imbued with teenage angst, grief, heartbreak and regret; brought to life through his melancholic vocals. His later work focused on darker themes that reflected his personal dealings with substance abuse and depression.
On December 8, 2019, Higgins was aboard a private jet flying from Los Angeles to Chicago, where law enforcement officials were waiting under the suspicion of ammunition and drugs aboard. In a frantic effort to hide the substance on board, Higgins allegedly swallowed multiple Percocet pills before convulsing and seizing.
Efforts to administer the emergency opioid overdose medication, Narcan, were futile and he was pronounced dead shortly after. A postmortem revealed Higgins had died as a result of unbelievably toxic levels of the opioid, oxycodone, in his system.
The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) inappropriate use of OxyContin became a concern in 2000, and by 2001 it had reached "levels of abuse never before seen". In 2000, over 10,000 people were treated in emergency rooms for "drug abuse episodes" involving drugs containing oxycodone. By 2007, the number had jumped to over 42,800.
According to the Addiction Center, United States, In the last year alone drug overdoses in the US have increased by over 15%, from 94,000 in 2020 to over 108,000 in 2021.
Opioid overdoses have since killed 70,000 people. That is more than ten times the number of US military members killed in the post-9/11 'War on Terror' in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan (or just a fifth of civilians killed in the same countries).
To know more about the opioid crisis and how opioids affect our systems and cause addiction: Emmy frontrunner Dopesick finds new meaning as big-pharma opioid crisis settlements soar .
In an interview with TMZ, his mother Carmella Wallace talked about his battle with prescription drug dependency.
She later established the Live Free 999 Fund in honor of Higgins and the battle he fought against addiction, anxiety and depression. With a focus on addiction, anxiety and depression, the organization hopes to normalize the conversation about the mental health challenges that Higgins faced, and provide an avenue for people to process those challenges in a healthy way.
Higgins began recording his music under the stage name Juice WRLD drawing inspiration from the 1992 film starring Tupac, Juice) stating that it represents “taking over the world”.
Though Juice’s songs have hinted at his death being around the corner for the rapper, it's safe to say that he went out having taken over the world indeed.
On his birthday, here's are our favourite tracks by Juice WRLD: