Legends Never Die

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Surfacing seven months after his tragic passing, Juice WRLD’s 2020 LP, <i>Legends Never Die</i>, is the rare posthumous release to feel like one of an artist’s major statement. The project is indicative of the exciting and fresh direction in which Juice’s music might have headed if he were alive. In both music and lyric, it stands as the most varied Juice WRLD release, finding him breaking out of his more broad-strokes treatises on romantic angst, drug abuse, and other dark themes and turning toward clearer, detail-oriented autobiography. The video version of the LP includes videos featuring animation, archival footage, and more, providing an epilogue to the music that celebrates Juice’s life and examines his legacy. Hauntingly, the lyrics on <i>Legends Never Die</i> feel more prescient than anything released before his death. On the mournful “Wishing Well,” Juice sings: “Let’s be for real/If it wasn’t for the pill, I wouldn’t be here/But if I keep taking these pill, I won’t be here, yeah/I just told y’all my secret, yeah.” In the computer-animated video for the song—included in this release—the rapper battles his way through a hallucinatory minefield of a world where gravity is suspended and threatening emojis chase and crowd him. The uncanny clarity of lyrics in songs like these points up the major difference between <i>Legends Never Die</i> and Juice’s formative releases: Having developed his character based on himself, he is often reacting to fame directly on these song, sketching out an explicit road map for his anxiety and existential despair. (See also his snapshot of a self-destructive night in London on the explicit emo homage “Man of The Year”). .

via Apple Music

The Clerk says

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