Just days after turning 21, SoundCloud rapper Juice Wrld passed away unexpectedly following
a seizure on December 8, 2019.
He may have only spent a couple of years in the music industry, but his patented brand
of emo rap defied genres and received accolades.
This is the untold truth of his life.
It's hard to imagine Juice Wrld, aka Jarad Higgins, as anything other than a rapper,
but toward the end of the SoundCloud star's teen years, he briefly held down a day job,
biding his time until he made it big.
According to XXL magazine, he picked up a job at a factory making car parts while he
tried to build his SoundCloud presence - but college wasn't really an option for this rapper.
In an interview with Vulture, the singer-songwriter revealed:
"I never thought about college, but my mom thought about it for me.
I knew 100 percent it wasn't for me.
I would've been going for all the wrong reasons.
I'd go, but it would have to be for something I'm passionate about."
In the end, Juice Wrld never had to make the choice between grinding at a meager day job
or getting a degree.
He was discovered at the ripe age of 18, the same age most people head out for their freshman
year of college.
Juice Wrld's success wasn't meticulously planned out.
In fact, it wasn't even planned out at all.
According to Complex, the rapper freestyled virtually everything - including his hits,
"Lucid Dreams" and "All Girls Are the Same" - which translated into the way the musician
ran his business.
The singer started completely DIY.
The New York Times reports that Juice Wrld was around 15 years old when he started recording
songs with his cellphone and putting them online under the stage name of Juice The Kidd.
At the age of 18, he was discovered by Lil Bibby and G Money, who signed him to Grade
A productions.
Then, in 2018, he finally got his major label shot.
According to Billboard, Juice Wrld signed a deal worth more than $3 million with Interscope
- but again, the success was still kind of random.
In an interview with Complex, Juice Wrld admitted that he didn't have any strategy when it came
to releasing music, noting that the attention just came on its own within six to eight months
of uploading his music to SoundCloud and saying he just went with gut instinct.
Those instincts clearly paid off, considering "Lucid Dreams" was already certified six times
platinum just before Juice Wrld passed away.
When Juice Wrld was a kid, he wouldn't have been allowed to listen to his own music.
In an interview with Complex, the rap star revealed that his mother was a, quote, "real
conservative" and wouldn't let him listen to the genre.
Instead, Juice Wrld's mom preferred Gospel music, and the singer was only introduced
to the world of rap through his cousins.
As it turns out, the songs he snuck behind his mama's back were exactly what taught him
how to rap.
Juice Wrld told the media outlet:
"I remember my cousins let me listen to old Gucci, old Wayne, old Birdman [...] I couldn't
remember the lyrics, so I would just finish them myself, and that's how it would start."
That said, the rapper went on to tell Complex that his mom had since opened up to the idea
of him being a professional rapper.
Who wouldn't be proud of their son being a platinum-selling music star?
"She listened to it and was like I just heard all your music, and obviously she wasn't rocking
with it."
Most modern pop songs have a team of writers who work for days, weeks, or sometimes even
months to perfect the track.
For comparison, Juice Wrld wrote his hit 2018 single, "Lucid Dreams," in about the same
amount of time it takes to shower before work.
In an interview with Billboard Juice Wrld revealed that he was a senior in high school
when he sat down on the couch in his living room and came up with the chorus and verses
of the song.
It only took him about 20 minutes to lay it down once he got to the studio, and that 20
minutes changed his entire life.
But by 2019, the song became so famous that rapper was absolutely sick of it.
In an interview with NME, he admitted he hated it, quote, "with a passion," saying:
"It's getting tired to me.
I still play it, but I'm glad I dropped the album."
Fans seem to disagree.
According to Forbes, the track had more than 980 million streams on Spotify as of December
2019.
"Lucid Dreams" might have made Juice Wrld famous, but it didn't make him a lot of money.
It did, however, make Sting a lot of money.
Speaking to Billboard, the English artist joked that royalties from the song were going
to put his grandkids through college.
How?
In case you weren't following music Twitter closely in 2018, Juice Wrld's track samples
Sting's 1993 single, "Shape of My Heart."
As a result, Sting was a credited writer who got 85% of the royalties according to a since-deleted
tweet from the song's producer, Nick Mira.
For his part, Juice Wrld told NME that the real number was actually higher.
Either way, he wasn't sweating it.
He said:
"That song is so much more expensive than money and what money can buy.
It's so much more touching than what money could touch.
That song really saved lives.
[...] Without Sting, this wouldn't even be a song.
I don't really trip on money, especially with a song like that, with the reaction it's had
from everybody."
Following Juice Wrld's death, Sting told CNN that out of all the covers and interpolations
of 'Shape of My Heart' that exist out there, "Lucid Dreams" was his favorite one, and that
he thinks it will, quote, "resonate for years to come."
"I'm totally open to hearing what people do with that as a basis.
You know it's exciting to hear that."
Sting wasn't the only artist to ask for royalties from "Lucid Dreams."
Juice Wrld was also sued by the now-defunct pop-punk band Yellowcard, which rose to prominence
in the early aughts with the mega-hit "Ocean Avenue."
According to reports from The Blast and Billboard, the 2019 suit claimed Juice Wrld copied "melodic
elements" from the band's 2006 song "Holly Wood Died," and referenced how he'd publicly
repped emo pop-rock bands and became a fan of the genre in fifth grade.
According to the suit, the rapper would have been a fifth grader the year "Holly Wood Dead"
was released and the year after Fall Out Boy dropped From Under the Cork Tree, which shared
a producer with Yellowcard's album and happened to be one of Juice Wrld's favorites, according
to Billboard.
The band sought $15 million in damages and a royalty or ownership share of the track.
Anyone who's listened to Juice Wrld's lyrics knows the rapper was an emo kid at heart.
He might have grown up secretly listening to rap behind his mother's back, but he also
had a penchant for a good pop-punk song.
Per The New York Times, he discovered emo and punk music the same way emo kids of the
early aughts found their favorite bands: by playing 2001's Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3.
Juice Wrld happened to be a fan of early '00s game consoles, and though the game wasn't
enough to make him run off and join the Black Parade, he did tell GQ in May 2019 that the
one person he wanted to work with next was Buddy Nielsen, the lead singer of Senses Fail.
Yup, Juice Wrld's emo roots went pretty deep.
GQ reported that he started playing Tony Hawk's Downhill Jam during middle school, which introduced
him to bands like Weezer and Green Day.
He also started listening to Black Veil Brides because his fifth grade crush liked that kind
of music.
Juice Wrld sadly struggled with substance abuse since he was a kid.
According to XXL magazine, he started sipping lean - or codeine cough syrup - when he began
listening to Future in the sixth grade.
The New York Times reports that he graduated to prescription pills in high school, and
during an interview with NME, the star admitted he was drinking "lister-lean," a mix of Sprite
and Listerine.
Per a 2018 interview in Vulture, Juice Wrld was trying to separate himself from a life
of drug use, which isn't an easy feat if you're already in the throes of an addiction.
The following year, he was still considering getting off narcotics, one way or another.
After a drug scare in July 2019, he took to Twitter to announce that he was quitting codeine,
but it's unclear if he was able to kick the habit for good.
The rapper told The New York Times:
"Every now and then I have concerns.
But at the end of the day, I'll be fine.
I was put on this earth for a reason."
Juice Wrld was young, but he knew love when he felt it.
His relationship with Ally Lotti was an absolute whirlwind, and she remained by his side pretty
much from the moment they first met to his very last day on this planet.
According to his 2019 GQ profile, the rapper met the social media influencer when she sent
him a message on Instagram as a fan.
They met in person for the first time in Rhode Island, and their first date ended up lasting
four days.
Shortly after, she moved out of her Memphis home to be with the rapper in Los Angeles.
She had to have everything shipped to her, including her two dogs, but she never once
looked back.
In just a couple of years, Juice Wrld made a massive impact to the music industry.
According to Billboard, the star made 25 appearances on the Billboard Hot 100 in less than two
years.
That's an achievement that's all the more unbelievable when you consider that he got
his start singing into his cellphone.
Both "All Girls Are the Same" and "Lucid Dreams" debuted toward the bottom of the Hot 100 in
2018, but "Lucid Dreams" quickly started climbing into the Top 40.
Since then, Juice Wrld's top tracks have included "Fine China," which featured Future and peaked
at No. 26; "Bandit," which featured NBA YoungBoy and hit No. 10; and of course "Lucid Dreams,"
which skyrocketed to No. 2 and spent a month in the Top 10.
Juice Wrld ended up topping Billboard's Artist Hot 100 Chart in early 2019.
Beyond his success on the Billboard charts, Juice Wrld was also named Spotify's No. 4
most-streamed male artist of 2019 in the United States.
Juice Wrld never rapped for the money.
His goal was always to help people get through the same tough stuff that he experienced throughout
his life.
In fact, he told NME that he purposely rapped about the dark side of drugs to shed light
on that sort of lifestyle.
"There's still other issues to talk about other than heartbreak.
You've got anxiety, you've got substance abuse, you've got… you know, there's a lot of issues
in the world to talk about."
Judging from an interview with Vulture, Juice Wrld went above and beyond to help his fans
throughout his short lifetime.
Though he was often playing stadiums towards the end of his career, he revealed that he
liked smaller shows because he could have conversations with fans and, quote, "talk
through whatever demons they're fighting."
He also told NME that he made music to help others, and it seems like it was working,
considering people reportedly told him that he saved lives all the time.
It's clear the rapper felt a strong responsibility and didn't plan on stopping.
He told Vulture:
"I'm gonna still lead people through whatever they're going through.
And since I've gone through it.
I could forever speak on it, no matter how I feel.
I could be happy and make a song for people that's dealing with depression.
I could be sad and make a song that will make people smile and be joyful."
Juice Wrld's tragic passing shocked more than just the rap world.
The singer managed to completely defy genres, landing collaborations with Panic! at the
Disco's Brendon Urie and singer Ellie Goulding.
In many ways, he pushed SoundCloud's wave of emo rap into the mainstream, but still
suffered the same fate as some of his fellow Internet rap pioneers.
Fans have noticed that the gutting track "Legends" from Too Soon may have eerily predicted the
rapper's own death.
The 2018 EP was originally meant to be a tribute to late rappers Lil' Peep and XXXTentacion.
Ultimately, "Legends" saw Juice Wrld question his own mortality, singing, quote, "We ain't
making it past 21."
The line proved darkly prophetic, holding true for all three of the Soundcloud rap pioneers,
each of whom did indeed end up dying tragically young.
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That's 1-800-662-4357.