Juice Wrld, the fast-rising young rapper best known for his 2018 hit “Lucid Dreams,” died on Sunday shortly after suffering a seizure at Chicago’s Midway Airport, Variety has confirmed. He was 21 years old.
A statement from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said that Jarad A. Higgins, 21, of Homewood, Ill., had died. The statement did not give a cause of death. The news was first reported by TMZ, which cited law enforcement sources saying that the rapper experienced a seizure while walking through the airport, and was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after.
Reps for the rapper’s label, Interscope Records, and management did not immediately respond to Variety‘s requests for comment.
Born and raised in Chicago, the rapper — who had just turned 21 on Dec. 2 — had enjoyed a rapid ascension since he first began posting his songs to SoundCloud as a teenager in 2015, working in a style that blended elements of emo and rock with hip-hop. His independently-released 2017 track “Lucid Dreams” proved to be a career-maker, rising steadily until an official single release in 2018 broke him onto the pop charts, where the song would peak at No. 2.
Signing to Interscope Records in early 2018, Juice released his debut album, “Goodbye & Good Riddance,” almost immediately after, which was certified platinum before the end of the year, and contained yet another No. 2 single in “All Girls Are the Same.” His busy year continued with a summer in memoriam EP dedicated to late fellow SoundCloud rappers XXXTentacion and Lil Peep; a collaborative album with Future, “Wrld on Drugs,” which reached No. 2 on the album chart in October; and an original song on the soundtrack for the film “Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.”
Juice released his second album, “Death Race for Love,” in spring of 2019. It was his first effort to reach No. 1 on the album chart. Also this year, he toured Europe with Nicki Minaj on a co-headlining bill.
While social issues were not at the forefront of most of his songs, the rapper had a strong response when asked by Variety in June about the number of young rappers who are currently incarcerated.
“If you a minority, the justice system is made for you to lose,” he said. “I’m not anybody to judge somebody’s actions. Everybody makes their own mistakes, regardless of what the mistake is. But if you’re a minority, just keep in mind that this criminal justice system was made for people to lose.”
He also said he was planning to release an album on his birthday (Dec. 2, last week). Although no album was released on that day, he appeared on a series of collaborations over the past few months, including tracks with BTS, Ellie Goulding, Benny Blanco and Young Boy Never Broke Again. A joint album with his friend, rapper Ski Mask the Slump God, with whom he’d collaborated in the past, was also said to be in the works.
The rapper posted what is apparently an unreleased lyric on Twitter Saturday that reads:
“Hands wrapped in chains made of my vices/ Introduce wok to Fanta she really liked him/ The devil talk so much sh– I really wanna fight him like Tyson/ Weapon so loud it’s ear biting.”
On Dec. 1, he posted: “This life is yours do what tf you want do great things and change the world don’t let no one tell you SH–.. and you’ll be bigger than “juice wrld” will ever be, and he’s going down as a legend – Jarad.”