Juice WRLD Fighting Demons Album Review
Many people thought Juice WRLD would slowly sink back into the abyss of forgotten artists after his death in December 2019. However, he has grown bigger than ever before with his second posthumous album, Fighting Demons. The album’s first preview came a month before the album’s official debut, with the drop of “Already Dead,” followed by Juice’s collaboration with Justin Bieber on the track “Wandered To LA” a few weeks later. This would be one of four artists featured on the new album, the others being Polo G, Trippie Redd, and Suga of BTS.t. After continuous hype and build-up online for months, the album was finally released on December 10, with it currently entering its fifth week at the top of Spotify’s album chart. However, there is still widespread debate on whether the album lived up to expectations.
Fighting Demons started out with the track “Burn,” a track that I believe is one of the top five on the album, with eerie background music on top of Juice’s lyrics creating a beautiful, yet decrepit song. However, the next song, “Already Dead,” was one that truly worried me, with the lyrics obviously portraying how Juice was struggling with his mental health, which makes one wonder why no one close to him tried to check in on him and see if there was anything wrong. This common theme of drugs is hinted to blatantly throughout the entire album on songs such as “You Wouldn’t Understand,” “Doom,” “Feel Alone,” and “Rockstar in his Prime”. Despite this, on the track “Until The Plug Comes Back Around,” it seems Juice acknowledges his addiction and the process of acquiring and doing drugs along with the consequences of doing so. In the song, Juice describes himself running away from pain, having demons, bad choices, and just having access to them as some driving factors behind him taking drugs. This song in its own way does something that has been missing a bit from Juice WRLD’s music since his passing in acknowledging an actual problem he has, versus trying to portray his awful addictions, in some cases, as something cool when it is anything but.
One of my only critiques of the album would be that even though the songs on the album were mostly excellent, the album itself lacked structure. The message the producers of the album were trying to convey was one of remorse for Juice WRLD, as they tried to portray him as a great loss for the world. However, the formatting of the album is one of the worst I’ve seen in recent times, with it feeling as though songs with the same storylines were put back to back. Having negative songs such as “Already Dead” and “You Wouldn’t Understand,” or “Doom” and “Go Hard” back to back portrays Juice in a negative light, in which he seems like just another young and naive artist who thought doing drugs was cool. Leaving songs such as “Relocate” and “Girl Of My Dreams ft. Suga Of BTS,” songs that portray him as human in, frankly, irrelevant spots on the album causes you to believe that he really was just another artist driven by drugs. Additionally, the tracks – and here I use the term track in a very loose sense – in which there is either Juice WRLD or Eminem speaking just ruins the entire flow of the album. My only other critique involves the track “Go Hard,” in which there is a missing second verse. Members of his label have said that the second verse will be released later this year; however, I do not understand the reasoning behind not just having the whole song on the album. Even if the second verse is Juice’s best ever, which I highly doubt, it seems like a load of fuss over nothing that is just frustrating fans and critics alike.
Even though I have criticized Juice a bit for his singing and rapping about drugs, it does not mean I think the songs should not be played or, even worse, not acknowledged at all. While it may be inappropriate to necessarily have these songs on loop, it’s important to understand what is truly going on throughout the song. Juice has been a therapist in a way for thousands of people by talking about his own problems and showing that no matter who you are, we all go through the same difficulties. Through Fighting Demons, he gives everyone a look into his mind as he struggles with the anxiety and addictions that would eventually lead to his unfortunate death. As Lyrical Lemonade’s Cole Bennett said in the film Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss, “there will be Juice WRLD fans who aren’t even born yet,” because the problems he talks about so depth will be here, sadly, forever.
By Luke Birch