The reason Juicy J is making so much money from new hip-hop: “I feel like I don’t really have to adapt”
As part of Three 6 Mafia, Juicy J received a vast amount of exposure and shared a lot of accolades with his Memphis peers. His 2002 debut album, Chronicles of the Juice Man, wasn’t commercially successful but is considered a Tennessee hip-hop classic and is still an epic body of work with appearances from the likes of Crunchy Black and Lord Infamous.
However, when he decided to go solo in 2009 as Three 6 Mafia hit a low, Juicy J began to ascend to levels he could have never as part of the collective. In 2009, he began collaborating with the likes of Chevy Woods and Ty Dolla $ign, as a part of Wiz Khalifa’s Taylor Gang crew.
When he joined forces with the highly relevant and mainstream act, he received more notoriety and began to surpass his brother (Project Pat) and his former crewmates Gangsta Boo and Lord Infamous. As he continued to feature on tracks with Khalifa and others regularly, he eventually decided to release his album, Stay Trippy, in 2012, leading to a huge hit.
Although Juicy J’s time may have passed over a decade ago, he still makes money from music today, and strangely, it’s not for much of his solo music on Spotify. During an appearance on the Two Ways About It series, Juicy J insisted that he gets income from around 90 per cent of rap songs released due to the sampling of his and Three 6 Mafia’s music.
Speaking about the influence of Last 2 Walk creators on today’s music, Juicy explained, “I feel like the new trends is the old trends because everybody’s sampling Three 6 Mafia, so I’m already in ’cause we started the trends.”
Unveiling the number of samples he clears daily, Juicy J continued, “On some real sh*t, five to six samples a day. I get paid off of pretty much every song, like 90 per cent of the songs that’s out right now. I just approve, approve. Every time I get that email, I approve.” The lyricist and producer made it clear that he appreciates the amount of love his old music is getting through samples, stating, “It’s a blessing. I love it when people sample.”
Juicy J then explained how, nowadays, he doesn’t feel like he needs to follow people because he is in comfortable territory, detailing, “I feel like I don’t really have to adapt to the trends ’cause all the music sounds like and has the flows of old Three-6-Mafia days, which I love. So I just keep doing what I’ve been doing.”
Juicy J and Three 6 Mafia’s music has been used in some of the biggest rap hits over the past decade, including Drake’s ‘No Friends In The Industry,’ A$AP Ferg’s ‘Plain Jane,’ Rae Sremmurd’ Powerglide,’ Cardi B’s ‘Bickenhead,’ and more.