Review | Juice WRLD finds immortality in new album ‘Legends Never Die’
Juice WRLD’s first posthumous album showcases not only his musical talents, but also his personal growth before his death.
Juice WRLD’s estate released the artist’s first posthumous album “Legends Never Die” July 10. Unsplash
In a classic Greek tragedy, an oft-used formula for modern narrative storytelling revolves the storyline around a single protagonist. This protagonist is generally a well-meaning person who embarks on a path of self-righteousness or redemption only to succumb to a fatal flaw.
Sometimes, myth begets reality. Such is the case of the late Jarad Higgins, known professionally as Juice WRLD. So let’s write his story.
The plot of any classic Greek tragedy is split into five acts. Here’s our five:
Act 1: Our hero, Higgins, is born. He develops an affinity for music and learns to play the piano by age 4.
Act 2: Higgins, as a result of unexplored trauma, struggles with anxiety and depression in his teenage years, which leads him to heavy experimentation with drugs.
Act 3: Higgins breaks out as a singer and rapper through melodic deliveries and unprecedented raw, emotional lyrics. He leans into his pain musically on “Goodbye and Good Riddance” and becomes a star. His lyrics deal with heartbreak and turn increasingly misogynistic. He sinks further into drug usage to cope with that heartbreak and mental illness.
Act 4: Our hero finds happiness in the form of a long-term, stable, loving relationship with girlfriend Ally Lotti. With the release of his second album, “Death Race for Love,” and a number of singles, his music slowly turns more outwardly loving, yet equally as self-critical. He tries to wriggle free of the grasp substances have on him, both in his music and in his personal life. Yet, at the end of Act 4, he overdoses unintentionally and dies in his girlfriend’s arms.
Act 5: His estate bands together to release an album of tracks Higgins was working on. Gone is the misogyny and the heartbreak, the anger of previous music. In its place is a desire to change for his loved ones, with the powerful fear that he can’t escape his own demons and corresponding drug usage.
Act 5 is somewhat inconclusive. Yet after his first posthumous album “Legends Never Die” was released July 10, 2020, it’s clear the legacy of Juice WRLD will linger long after his death – and not simply because he’s another sad story of a talented artist dying before his time. It will linger because his discography tells a story of a flawed yet good-hearted man trying to find happiness and struggling desperately to rise above a bleak world to become something better. Whatever his future releases may hold, “Legends Never Die” was the last piece of that puzzle.
Musically, the album stands on its own as an engaging and emotional listen. It’s easily Higgins’ most cohesive body of work, and it manages to effortlessly slide between rock, pop and trap genres from song to song and even minute to minute. Songs like “Wishing Well” and “Up Up And Away” demonstrate Higgins’ innate knack for articulating his pain across a flowing river of bridges and hooks. His lyrics are rarely sugarcoated. Rather than wrap his emotions – his mental issues and substance abuse struggles – in protective metaphors or similes, he lays them out in melodic patterns that stick in the mind. It’s beautiful in its artistic simplicity.
At times, Higgins leans into his pain on “Legends Never Die” so deeply it becomes repetitive, a problem throughout his discography. Yet, as pointed out by Rolling Stone, the album is strongest when he offsets that pain with hope, a duality he creates better than in any of his previous projects. It’s the reason why songs like “Man of the Year,” “Life’s a Mess” and “Come & Go” are some of the strongest on the album. They represent Higgins trying to accept happiness and recognize what he has – our hero is changing for the better before his demise.
Yes, this is a dramatic piece. It’s a dramatic analogy to make. But, “Legends Never Die” is a dramatic listen. One song, literally titled “Can’t Die,” finds Higgins musing over somber guitar strings: “Sometimes it feels like I can’t die/‘Cause I never was alive.”
He can’t truly die, in a sense, but instead because of how very much alive he was. He is an icon to look up to, because of the man he was trying to become. His story is so real, so inexorably intertwined with his discography, that it will influence his supporters’ lives for years in the future. In a way, it’s the most bittersweet end to a tragedy: he may end up saving the lives of others by failing to save his own.
Rating: 4/5