The biggest heartbreak Juice WRLD ever experienced: “A lot of people switch it up”
Prior to his death in 2019, Juice WRLD made a name for himself with heartbreak anthems such as ‘Lucid Dreams’, one of his biggest hits that peaked at number two on the Hot 100. He sings on the record, “I still see your shadows in my room/ Can’t take back the love that I gave you/ It’s to the point where I love and I hate you/ And I cannot change you, so I must replace you.”
While that song was about a break-up, the Chicago rapper’s biggest heartbreak had nothing to do with romantic relationships. Speaking to Avril Lavigne the same year he passed, Juice opened up about lost friendships hitting him the hardest.
“It happened after I got famous, and it wasn’t a relationship,” he said during the conversation for Interview Magazine. “It was more about people I thought would always be down for me not being down for me anymore. Some of my old friends that I thought I would have forever kind of just drifted away.”
He continued, “When you’re in the moment, and you think you have good friends, you kind of assume you’re going to die next to your friends when you’re in your nineties. But then a lot of people switch it up, and that part is the biggest heartbreak. The music I’ve made after I realised that definitely reflects that experience.”
In another interview with Hypebeast, Juice said that the “emo” label that was tagged to his music was both a positive and negative thing. “I feel like sometimes music has to be a little dark because the world is not really a light place,” he said. “It’s not really a happy place, not to sound too pessimistic. Sometimes being optimistic ain’t it.”
Juice passed away on December 8th, 2019, with his cause of death later announced to be caused by toxic levels of oxycodone and codeine in his system. He suffered a convulsion episode and a seizure, with two doses of naloxone, an emergency medication, administered following a suspected opioid overdose.
The ‘All Girls Are the Same’ artist revealed that happiness, to him, was “just having a good time,” but claimed he didn’t have the right to answer that question due to his substance abuse.
“I’m in no position to talk about happiness because I have and still fucking with substances,” he said. “So it’s a tainted image on happiness. It’s a false picture on happiness. People chase highs. I feel like my image of happiness isn’t probably the most accurate. I feel like to ask somebody about happiness, you’ll need to ask like a seven-year-old kid.”
Since his death, three posthumous albums have been released, with Legends Never Die, Fighting Demons and The Party Never Ends all debuting in the top five of the Billboard 200.