The business of posthumous releases is always contentious, and now Lil Bibby is threatening to cancel the next Juice WRLD album due to all the leaks.
And there’s certainly been a lot of them. Earlier this month, six of the late rapper’s tracks, plus a freestyle, appeared on hip hop accounts on social media.
The leaked songs featured a few guests: M.I.A. (‘Tribe’), Chance the Rapper (‘Door’), and Hypnotic OG (‘Long Day’), Juice performed alone on ‘Out the Dust’, ‘Confide To’, and ‘All Burnt Up’.
Lil Bibby, though, doesn’t seem happy about it. The leak culture content account @Kurrco posted text messages allegedly showing Lil Bibby discussing his frustration with the leaks (see below). “These leaks is getting out of hand,” one text says. “I hope all the fans are happy, the party never ends might be cancelled if all this shit leaks,” another text adds.
Judging by the reactions to this month’s leaks, however, fans aren’t fully impressed. ‘Door’ was described as being “genuinely one of the worst songs I have heard in recent history (Hint: it’s not Juice WRLD’s fault),” while someone else questioned, “how are they still leaking shit.”
Juice’s mother, Carmella Wallace, has been vocal about disliking the process. “I understand they loved him. They loved his music, but there’s a proper way to do it,” she said last December.
Vince Staples also had some interesting comments on the capitalisation of dead rappers this week. “It’s money in it and they gonna keep selling it and we gonna keep perpetuating it and we gon’ be hurt when somebody dies,” he said in a radio interview. “I don’t necessarily know if they care. If they did, man the album ready in four weeks once you die. You get more press on the album after you die.”
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Juice’s last official posthumous release came with 2021’s Fighting Demons, his fourth studio album. It peaked at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 and reached number seven on the ARIA Album Chart.
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https://twitter.com/Kurrco/status/1504194144050290688?s=20&t=VVe8oU170ImrRBHrNT9r1Q
