Following his massively successful first posthumous album, Juice WRLD’s estate is gearing up for another release. As fans eagerly await new music from the late rapper, it’s worth asking: do posthumous albums continue the legacy, or do they exploit the memory of the artist?
Juice WRLD’s label head and frequent collaborator Lil Bibby confirmed the forthcoming album speaking to The Hollywood Fix this week. “Juice WRLD’s next album,” he said when asked what he was working on. “Juice WRLD next album crazy.”
The news comes as no surprise. Legends Never Die,the artist’s first posthumous album, dropped in July of this year, seven months after the rapper’s sudden death. And there’s more where that came from — multiple sources close to the rapper have repeatedly confirmed that Juice had thousands of unreleased tracks prior to his passing, and in the last months, it’s become clear his estate isn’t shy of releasing them.
When it comes to posthumous releases, they tend to fall into two camps: exploitative cash grabs or preservations of memory — often, they’re hard to tell apart. The question is: does the project serve the deceased artist’s legacy or their surviving family’s pockets?
