By Sebastian C. Romero, Assistant Entertainment Editor
Juice Wrld’s Fighting Demons is the rapper’s second posthumous album after his accidental death in 2019. It offers 18 tracks, with two tracks being interludes while the rest are songs featuring American rapper Polo g and Trippie Redd, American singer Justin Bieber, and Suga, who is part of Kpop band BTS.
It’s definitely worth a listen.
Many Juice fans wanted to see more of the artist himself on his newest album after his first posthumous album Legends Never Die had way too many features that fans didn’t like too much.
Fighting Demons meets that request. Juice talks about drug addiction being the main factor of the rapper’s life. The rapper’s mental health decayed during his time in this world, and while most people see him as an icon, what he sees himself is more sinister and dark.
The album starts off with the song “Burn” and tells the story of how Juice was struggling with his drug addiction, and how it affected his viewpoint of the truth within his reality. This is key to the whole album because the reality is he knew the addiction was going to kill him, he just didn’t know when it was going to happen, and that was one of his biggest fears.
Separate from the album and to give the context of what I mean by “one of his biggest fears’’ during his time on Earth is the fact that in other songs, released and unreleased, Juice talks about something happening to him such as him getting shot, him getting back-stabbed by his friends, and, of course, his addiction killing him. It’s crazy that he put lyrics on different songs about events he was paranoid about.
It is heartbreaking that this person could’ve been saved. You hear him talk about his problems and how he thinks drugs are helping him when they aren’t. It’s depressing, to say the least. The only hype song on the album really is “Feline ft Polo g and Tripple Redd.” Other upbeat songs – well mainly in between hype and sad – are “You Wouldn’t Understand,” “Window,” and “Relocate.”
Overall, I enjoyed listening to this album, not by jamming out, which was one of the reasons, but because of the story it tells and the truth of what addiction can do to someone.
The fact that Juice was crying out for help before and after the fandom is just heartbreaking. It wasn’t the best album that Juice released, even though his label, Grade A, made the album and not by Juice’s choice. But it still stings finding out the reality of his addiction, and just how he kept going with it until he dropped to the floor. It is a sad reality that the label, the listeners, and his fans have to face that for a really long time he suffered while making his music.