The track’s raw, ground-shaking horns recall Kanye’s ‘Blood On the Leaves’, with Juice WRLD riding the beat like Future in his prolific ‘DS2’ days. His self-awareness on ‘Big’ is riveting, with lyrics such as “ I spent 50K to install a codeine fountain in my estate” poking fun at the excesses of being a modern trap star. However, as brilliant and catchy as all these tracks are, the record only truly gets going when Juice WRLD moves outside of his feelings for a second and starts to have some fun. On “Rider”, Higgins describes himself as the “codeine Cobain”, but the comparison to the Nirvana frontman isn’t as far off as you might think he shares Kurt Cobain’s ability to exorcise his demons while still managing to sounding effervescent. The same can be said for the brilliant ‘Empty’, where an inspired Juice WRLD raps about “Losing my sanity in a house up in the hills” and moves against the typical boasts that litter new wave rapper’s rhymes. ‘She’s The One’ (not a Robbie Williams cover, sadly) and ‘Won’t Let Go’ are tender love songs that communicate what it’s like to be on the edge of heartbreak even in the thralls of infatuation, with each showing a deeper level of introspection than you might expect from the artist. Thankfully, with follow-up ‘Death Race For Love’, his songwriting becomes less weighted on sad-sack anthems, as he displays a more impressive sonic range. Yet Juice WRLD’s flat first studio album, ‘Goodbye & Good Riddance’, didn’t quite fulfil this obvious potential. Juice WRLD – aka Jarad Higgins – makes songs that stick, his vocal dissonance capturing what it feels like to be young and in pain, and feeling a sense of indifference towards authority figures.Īside from the catchy harmonies, he’s also a creative rapper, capable of freestyling for an hour straight and spitting witty bars almost on command. Since breaking through with the Sting-sampling hit single “Lucid Dreams” last year, the Chicago rapper’s angst-ridden teen anthems have resonated strongly with the public as well as peers such as Future (who released a fun collaborative mixtape, ‘WRLD on Drugs’, with him). Yet Juice WRLD’s colourful second studio album ‘Death Race For Love’ takes emo rap to inventive new heights, with the 20-year-old artist successfully filling the void left by the two late artists. Following the untimely deaths of Lil Peep and XXXTentacion, you could perhaps be forgiven for assuming that the emo rap wave will fade out.
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