The WRLD is on drugs in the surprise collab album between Future and Juice WRLD. Fans were surprised this past Friday when modern rap met SoundCloud rap as Future and up-and-comer Juice WRLD collaborated to drop their view on all of this anti-drug talk from the media.
The album dropped with 16 songs and 6 features coming from Young Scooter, Thugger, Yung Bans, Gunna, Lil Wayne and Nicki Minaj. With the drop fans got to hear a different view on the world of drugs from two of the industries most predominant users of drugs in their music and lifestyles. Recently with the tragic deaths of artists such as Lil Peep and Mac Miller drugs have been skewed by the media as the reason for the deaths of these young rappers and have made it so that addiction is looked at as a serious illness, which it is entirely. Future and Juice make it clear through the album that the drugs are only in their lives as a coping mechanism to the pain and stress. A perfect example of this is in the first track Jet Lag, where Juice WRLD explains how it’s the same drugs that the media says kill people that he uses to help him tour across the world. As we all know as fans most of our favourite rappers do drugs and live risky lifestyles in our eyes but not many of us stop to think that if we empathize into their shoes that we might exploit drugs to the same extent.
Along the way the album has hits like Fine China where Future and Juice talk about how they both have someone in their life that they vibe with and treat like a piece of ‘Fine China’. The message doesn’t stop there though. When you dig deeper into the lyrics Juice WRLD says
“Tell me that you love me, baby, say it again
Repeat it over and over until it’s in my brain
Picked up the drugs so I let my brain go
Woulda fried yours too, but I’m selfish about my Percs, oh”
Hidden inside the banger we have that message where Juice implies his brain is fried because of drugs and that he won’t allow certain people in his life to adopt it either. It seems like while Future and Juice both advocate for drug use in particular events in your life, they also understand that it can be a tipping point for a lot of people like our brothers Peep and Mac.
As we explore the album further we see more upbeat songs such as No Issue and Transformer ft. Nicki Minaj. The vibe of the album is essentially the epitome of drugs; it’s up and down in its melody and flow, but ultimately regains a composure towards the end of the album. The album itself stimulates a high for the listener as we were treated to a surprise we did not expect, but maybe an eye opener for those of us who needed it. We are looking forward to any more collabs between the two friends and come back to Sidedoor for more info on any rap albums you loved.