He nods to global dance currents (“Hear Me Calling”) and sometimes shifts his tone halfway through a track (“The Bees Knees”).
And there is plenty of that formula.īut Juice WRLD also peppers the album with steroidal SoundCloud rap (“Syphilis”), reverent R&B (“Demonz Interlude”) and boisterous, old-fashioned chest-thumping (“Big”). The safe play for Juice WRLD on his second solo album, Death Race for Love, would be more of the same - mournful guitar, self-involved lyrics sketching romantic torment, vocals from the school of why-croon-if-you-can-wail. Streamers gobbled it up - “Lucid Dreams” became the most-streamed single of 2018 not made by Drake - and commuters stuck in traffic enjoyed it too: “Lucid Dreams” became a multi-format radio hit. Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams” was fraught and wounded, a stinging narrative of betrayal softened, slightly, by a sample of the actual Sting.