Juice WRLD: Death Race for Love review – emo-rap headed straight for gen Z (original) (raw)

Emo-rap hasn’t exactly won awards for its image in its short few years on earth. It quickly got massive and then, just as quickly, became embroiled in scandal. You can tell its artists by their face tattoos, rainbow hairstyles and prescription drug-inspired names; also by their premature deaths (Lil Peep), alleged felonies (Tekashi 6ix9ine) or both (XXXTentacion).

Juice WRLD: Death Race for Love album artwork

However troubling or ludicrous you find them, these rappers are in the mainstream now. Young fans love them and their tortured lyrics. And 20-year-old Juice WRLD, from Chicago, is both the next big prospect and the most pop. In 2018, he reached No 2 in the US with Lucid Dreams, his Sting-sampling track about contemplating death after a breakup.

His second album in a year is excessively long, which smacks of flogging the emo-rap horse before it buckles. But if tastes change, then Juice WRLD may have the chops to transcend them. Hear Me Calling is probably the best dancehall-lite tune since Justin Bieber’s Sorry, and Flaws and Sins is equally melodic. It’s slim on features (only Young Thug, Clever and Brent Faiyaz) but big on misanthropic head-nodders that put Juice’s Fall Out Boy-style whine or raspy flow to the fore: he is more versatile than his peers and also more gifted.

You can see, perhaps, how emo-rap is relatable for Gen Z-ers who embrace hip-hop’s cool while remaining strangers to its formative preoccupations with street life. Many will more likely have experienced such universal sadnesses as being dumped. But ultimately, the suicide references of songs such as Empty and casual misogyny in the tauntingly violent Syphilis leave an uncomfortable taste. Nonetheless, it will be massive regardless.