Juice WRLD’s estate released his final album “The Party Never Ends” Nov. 29, closing the door to a discography that has reached and impacted millions of lives.
This is the third posthumous album for Jarad Higgins, better known as Juice WRLD.
“The Party Never Ends” has been in the works for over three years, but the final product just doesn’t feel like it.
It’s difficult to get a posthumous album right because it’s impossible to know what the artist would have wanted. Higgins died in 2019 with just two albums to his name. Over the last five years, his family and label have attempted to build his catalog to a full-fledged discography.
Back in 2022, the Chicago native’s label, Interscope Records, estimated that the late rapper had over 3,000 unreleased songs left in the vault. Yet the latest installment in Higgins’ discography not only feels empty, but downright disrespectful.
The album cover itself was designed by Japanese artist Takashi Murakami. It features a cartoonish version of Higgins seemingly in a drug-infused state of mind. This would feel fine, if not normal for Higgins, if he was alive, as a majority of His songs mention his drug use. But the fact that Higgins died of a Percocet — an extremely addictive narcotic — overdose makes this cover seem distasteful.
The tone deafness continues beyond the album’s cover and seeps into the music itself.
The man behind all of this is Lil Bibby, Juice WRLD’s manager who became responsible for Higgins’ music after the rapper’s passing. During the rollout for “The Party Never Ends,” Bibby took to Instagram messages to reveal that the album was planned to have a specific feel to it.
“(The) album is made to sound like you’re at a Juice WRLD concert,” Bibby said. “Let’s party one last time!”
For a body of work that’s supposed to feel like a concert, the album is exhausting and at some points depressing. At 18 tracks long, most songs towards the middle of the project all blend together which causes a lack of cohesion.
The concert-like elements that Bibby promised are quickly thrown out the window by the fourth track “Lace It” which features both Eminem and Benny Blanco. During his verse, Eminem speaks on the vices of addiction and vents his frustration about the drugs that caused Higgins to have an overdose.
Eminem raps, “Then you murdered Jarard, didn’t you? Piece of shit/ With prescription Vic’s, addiction’s like a fucking vicious cycle/ Juice, we will forever miss you.”
The mixing and mastering of the album is far from perfect. It feels like most of the songs have been left untouched since 2019. With both Interscope and Bibby having a three-year gap between album releases, the poor mixing on “The Party Never Ends” is unacceptable.
Unlike Higgins’ first posthumous album “Legends Never Die,” this album feels like a bunch of throwaway tracks put together and released without any sense of cohesion.
Despite a lackluster product, there are some diamonds in the rough. “Misfit” and “Celebrate” featuring Offset serves as a bittersweet reminder of the talent that Higgins possessed.
“The Party Never Ends” is a disservice to the fans who held their breath for years waiting for this album. It serves as a glaring reminder about the ongoing moral questioning of whether or not a posthumous album should be released without the involvement of the artist who inspired it.
