Since Chicago-born rapper and singer Juice WRLD tragically passed away in 2019 at age 21, there have been numerous posthumous releases and reissues, as well as lost singles, videos and features dug up to help broaden our understanding of his legacy. Still, it would be hard to argue that his most enduring statement is anything other than his debut album: the melancholic, emo-infused 2018 LP Goodbye & Good Riddance. The record expressed a confident but vulnerable, genre-agnostic musical voice that played a significant role in altering the sound of hip-hop in the late 2010s. Following up a third-anniversary edition, this fifth-anniversary reissue of the album from 2023 integrates a couple of unreleased tracks to help create a wider picture of the style Juice was developing at the time. Two of these are leaks from 2019 and 2020. "No Good" shares some musical DNA with the late rapper’s monolithic, diamond-selling hit, "Lucid Dreams"—also included on G&GR. Both songs open with an echoing, gently synthetic acoustic guitar and deal with dysfunctional relationships and drug abuse. "No Good", though, showcases the influence of Juice's trap contemporaries more than the bigger hit’s emo leanings. The other addition, "Glo’d Up", is similar stylistically, if more unbridled—a cryptic examination of drifting away from a partner that features a particularly raw vocal performance by Juice. He pushes the top end of his range on the cathartic chorus: "Hate it when I'm goin' through the motions/'Cause I ain't never showin' no emotion/I tell her, ‘It's over, it's over’/I done glowed up, I done growed up." These tracks fit right into the despondent flow of this new version of G&GR, which is additionally expanded with the videos for the record’s biggest hits—"All Girls Are The Same" and "Lean Wit Me", along with "Lucid Dreams"—as well as the less ubiquitous "Black & White". From the videos’ warped but childlike imagery to the potent combination of pain and naïveté built into Juice’s rhymes and melodies, there has never been a release offering such comprehensive insight into what put the rapper into a class of his own when he hit the mainstream.
Other Versions
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