Juice WRLD died of a seizure caused by a drug overdose in December 2019. The rapper was one of the most popular artists in the world at the time of his passing and, posthumously, he has continued to move records as one of the greatest songwriters of his generation. The 21-year-old Chicago rapper had been transparent about his issues with substance abuse and mental health, singing about his struggles with both in many of his songs. What makes his death even more difficult to process is the fact that Juice was set to enter a rehabilitation program mere weeks following his untimely demise, as revealed earlier this year by Lil Bibby.
In a new interview published by GQ and written by Dan Hyman, Juice WRLD’s final days are documented by various members of the rapper’s team, as well as his collaborators. According to Max Lord, Juice’s recording engineer who was not present on the artist’s tragic place ride from Los Angeles to Chicago, where he allegedly downed multiple pills to hide them from the police, Juice’s drug consumption was becoming a real problem among his crew.
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“Man, you’re taking this a little too far right now,” said Max Lord, remembering how he felt in December 2019. Lord says that the artist lied about being sober in order to do drugs again with a different group of people. “We were all starting to be on his case a lot more about the amount of pills he was taking,” he said. “He was hiding and compartmentalizing how much he was doing with different people. He’d come into the studio room and act like he hasn’t gotten high at all that day, and do a certain amount in there before I tell him, ‘Bro, no, chill.’ Then he was going upstairs and hanging out with the guys and doing the same thing.”
One week before his death, Juice had finished a tour in Australia, where he was confronted by members of his team. “We had just broken down a lot of barriers with him,” said Lord. “I and a couple other people had come to him in tears, like, ‘We’re worried about you, and we’re scared we’re going to lose you if you keep up these habits. And we have to do something.’ And he agreed. And we had treatment booked for later [starting on December 22]. That was the soonest they were available to get him in. It hurts. It really hurts.”
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The new interview also features anecdotes from Juice WRLD’s mother Carmella Wallace, other members of his entourage, videographer Cole Bennett, and recording artists including Offset, G Herbo, and more. Read it in full at the link below.