Juice WRLD

In a neo-Italianate mansion in Beverly Hills, a group is gathered around the kitchen island waiting for 20-year-old rapper Juice WRLD (birth name Jarad Higgins) to come downstairs. The kitchen is stocked with boxes of Sprinkled Donut Crunch and Honey Bun cereal. Juice’s friend Caesar pads into the kitchen in Gucci slippers to reheat some chicken Parmesan in the toaster. Pete, his manager, says he’s going to play us some songs from Juice WRLD’s sophomore album,  Death Race for Love, and then puts on “Barbie Girl” by Aqua instead. Everyone laughs. After the fake-out, he plays us some of the actual new music, starting with new single “Robbery.” Juice WRLD is coming off the success of last year’s  Goodbye & Good Riddance, whose single “Lucid Dreams” led him to become the next star of the genre occasionally known as emo-rap. His music combines several potent strains of teen alienation genres, recalling nothing so much as nu-metal. It’s angry, depressed, and self-conscious, but also hooky and soaring. On “Robbery” he intones gothly, “I woke up in a hearse,” before adding, “One thing my dad told me was never let a woman know you’re insecure.” But it is talking openly about insecurity, depression, and other mental-health issues, as well as being frank about addiction struggles, that has really made Juice a star. On the new album, he reassures us, “I’m 19 and I’m rich … psych, I’m still sad as a bitch.”

Juice WRLD walks in, wearing wire-frame glasses, ripped jeans, and a T-shirt made of two shirts — Britney Spears on the cover of  Baby One More Time  stitched to Lil Wayne on the cover of  Tha Block Is Hot  — as apt a summary of Juice WRLD’s vibe as you could come by. Almost every big male rapper in a post-Drake world has a touch of sad boi to him, but Juice WRLD wallows in Morrissey levels of misery. He got big off raw, sad, songs, but he is also wary of being boxed in forever with the trend. On his new album he moves beyond emo-rap, even venturing into upbeat pop. Juice is currently the biggest act on Interscope, and today he is going to the Sunset Strip where the label will be unveiling a billboard for him.

Emo-rap, which appeared and grew in the last few years as a sideways outgrowth of the bedroom minimal trap rap made on SoundCloud, is at a pivotal moment. Its fascination with Byronic sadness, pills, and misogyny feels different scrutiny after the fentanyl-related deaths of rappers Mac Miller and Lil Peep and the murder of rapper/domestic abuser XXXtentacion. Juice grapples with the change in the music, announcing that he doesn’t want to die like his peers. Its fans are also aging, and Juice himself is no longer a teenager either. He is at a crossroads — go full pop-rap and join Post Malone, Migos, and the like, as his label would probably hope he will, or continue on the emo-rap path that logically leads toward horrorcore. Moving outside his established sound on  Death Race for Love marks an evolution, but I ask Juice if he worries his fan base will feel betrayed by a slightly happier Juice WRLD.

“I hope not. Because even when I find my true happiness, which I find more and more of it every day, I ain’t finna stop the mission that I’ve been put on. I’m gonna still lead people through whatever they’re going through,” he says. “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. As long as you felt those emotions, you can channel them back anytime. You can think back and relate to it anytime. As a part of learning the lesson, you keep that shit instilled in you.” As for the music, “It’s all about progression. Evolution. You can’t be afraid to evolve.”