The one Travis Scott song Juicy J wishes he was on
Juicy J and Travis Scott have worked together several times in the past, making songs like ‘No English,’ ‘Wasted’ and ‘Neighbor’ through the years. But there’s one particular track of Scott’s that J doesn’t feature on—but he wishes that he had.
During a conversation with Billboard in 2018, Juicy J spoke about ‘Neighbor,’ one of the songs that he actually did make with Scott, explaining how it came about.
“Travis called me up and reached out about hearing some new beats when he was working on Astroworld,” J recalled. “We vibed out in the studio. On my way out, after we had been in the studio for three hours, I was like, ‘Yo, Travis, let me get a record for my new album.’ He went into his files and pulled up ‘Neighbor.’”
Scott’s work on the song by that point had already been fairly extensive, but J started messing around to whip it into better shape. “The beat was already done and he had everything on there,” he explained. “It didn’t really have a format to it originally. When I got to the studio the next day, I took the track and chopped it up.”
J moved things around and added his own verse. It was, in his words, “magic from there.”
Juicy J and Scott clearly had good working chemistry around this time, but that did not spill into Scott’s song ‘Sicko Mode.’ Drake, Swae Lee and Big Hawk all feature on the track, which was released as part of Scott’s third album Astroworld in 2018. But there was no room for Juicy J.
“Nah, I’m not on there,” he confirmed to Billboard. “I wish I was—that song is a smash.”
It’s easy to see why J might feel bad about not making it onto ‘Sicko Mode.’ The song was a real hit, reaching number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and remaining in the top ten for 30-plus weeks. It was the first hip-hop song to ever do that.
Beyond that, ‘Sicko Mode’ was widely praised by critics and it secured Scott with a couple of Grammy nominations, too. Not many songs reach that level of success, so it’s hardly a surprise that Juicy J was disappointed to miss out on being involved in its creation.