First off, I’d like to start by saying- R.I.P Juice. Your legacy as one of the renegades in genre categorization will be remembered.
Juice’s death is a loss to humankind in general. Many people compare Juice, X & Peep as the Kid Cudi & Ye’s (at least his initial work. I dunno what he’s doing with his new Gospel album) of our generation. Cudi & Ye might have been the harbingers of this generation as they definitely influenced a lot of these artists. So. If you don’t know much about Soundcloud rap, here’s a little summary (I don’t claim to be an expert in the subject, but I’d say my high consumption of Genius News videos must result to something)-
Right. So everybody knows about the tatted up rapper with the trap musical tendencies who talk about drugs, girls, sex & money.
However, there are two other types of Soundcloud rappers too-
- The rapper who sings/raps about societal issues. Rap laid its foundation in societal activism. Even though we don’t see much of that right now, juice was an example of how that torch of social activism was passed on to this new subgroup. He partook in drugs (like Peep) & many others (such as X) had a history with battery & violence. But these people were mostly a product of their environment. Many people wouldn’t see that & denounce their music as well as actions. However, one must consider the facts first & then, formulate their opinions. Juice, X & Peep were a product of their environments, wanting to be the part of the “in-group” in rap.
- Meme Rappers. We see many of these guys spring up in youtube, vine (what’s that?) aaaaannnnnnd Soundcloud (duh). A good example would be-
Ski Mask the Slump God
as well as my man from Indonesia, Rich Brian-
These guys made their music as weird as they could in order to get a laugh out of everyone & reach fame.
Now you might’ve wondered how all this, relates to the titles of the post (Me too!). Now I shall answer the question you didn’t ask as well as the one I asked myself by saying that many people predict that Juice’s death is the end of mumble rap. You might already suspect this but, that claim is most probably invalid. Remember when Jay-Z released DOA (Death of Autotune)? Yeah. The song was great, don’t get me wrong. It’s just the fact that the claim never bore any fruit. If anything, the opposite happened. Soundcloud rap is iGen music. It is mutating faster than a goddamn metastatic cancer in the pancreas. Say whatever you want about it. As long as we change our music & consumer tastes (hard to happen), Soundcloud rap is here to remain. This genre is akin to a frontier. It mixes the previously popular rock & emo (my god. Anyone remember Linkin Park? How about Green Day?) with the genre that overtook it- rap. Plus it already had a foundation laid with Cudi & Ye. So, case in point- Soundcloud rap is here to stay. Maybe we should be careful about future artists as well. The message Soundcloud rap shows is that of wealth & an ideal, successful person. Maybe we should reflect a bit more & think about our choices as a generation. I know I might sound like any of our parents but……. I dunno. These deaths scare me. Just as they should, you. All I’m saying is…….. that we think in a serious way about this issue.
& once again- R.I.P Juice. You provided many of us with comfort & entertainment.