Juice WRLD’s mom says rapper was ‘ready to get help’ three months before his death
Juice WRLD, a popular rapper who died in 2019 of a drug overdose, appeared ready to go to rehab just months before his death, his mother revealed this week.
Camella Wallace gave her first public interview since her son’s death on “Tamron Hall Show” Jan. 11. She explained in the interview how it was “scary” when her son went from a high schooler to a best-selling rapper almost overnight, and how his drug use cut his life short at 21 years old.
Juice WRLD, whose given name is Jarad Anthony Higgins, died Dec. 8, 2019, after he went into convulsions at Midway International Airport in Chicago, according to The Associated Press. He died of an accidental overdose of oxycodone and codeine, an autopsy determined.
Three months prior, Juice WRLD told his mom he made the decision to get professional help for his drug use, Wallace said on “Tamron Hall Show.”
“He seemed like himself, like my baby... He wasn’t doing the lean anymore, I could tell there was a difference,” Wallace said. “I think he was still doing pills, but he told me he was ready to get help. It was a special moment. We just had that moment, where I just knew he was going to overcome it.”
As Juice WRLD became a rap sensation, his mom said it scared her because she was unable to protect him from an industry she knew little about.
“His best interests wasn’t being looked out for,” Wallace said. “I think people had their own agendas. I think they liked the lifestyle. And they were young, so I’ll give them that...but I just think he didn’t have the people in place to just tell him to stop or no. He just didn’t have that support system in place.”
After first becoming popular through SoundCloud, Juice WRLD rose to fame with his 2018 album, “Goodbye & Good Riddance,” before releasing his second album, “Death Race for Love,” a year later. He won the 2019 Billboard Music Award for Top New Artist, and posthumously won honors from the American Music Awards and iHeartMusic Awards.
Hall compared the rapper’s death to past generation’s deaths of Kurt Cobain and Tupac Shakur, artists whose legacies have lived on for more than 25 years.
Wallace said she learned of her son’s overdose when her nephew called and said Juice WRLD had a seizure at the airport and was taken to the hospital. She arrived at the hospital but was unable to see her son before he was pronounced dead.
“I was just devastated. I just knew, ‘Maybe this would be his wake-up call and he’ll be OK,’” Wallace said of her thought process in the hospital. “But it just never happened. I was never able to get to him to make sure that he was OK.”
Juice WRLD’s gravitas and command of the microphone are still revered by many. He remains one of the top 50 artists in the world, according to Spotify streaming data. His second posthumous album, “Fighting Demons” debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 chart last month.
This story was originally published January 12, 2022 at 1:42 PM with the headline "Juice WRLD’s mom says rapper was ‘ready to get help’ three months before his death."