In the years leading up to late 2019, Juice WRLD experienced a meteoric rise to fame, largely beginning with the popularity of his song ‘Lucid Dreams’, which became one of the biggest streaming hits of 2018.
Sadly, the rappers success for short lived as he was tragically pronounced dead on December 8 2019, just six days after his 21st birthday. The rapper suffered a medical emergency shortly after landing at Chicago’s Midway International Airport. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office later confirmed to XXL that the death was accidental and occurred “as a result of oxycodone and codeine toxicity”.
Shortly after his passing, Juice WRLD’s mum, Carmela Wallace, spearheaded a mental health and addiction support program called Live Free 999 Foundation, in his honour.
Now, Wallace has opened up about her son’s untimely death in a candid interview with XXL. During the chat she shared that it was Juice WRLD’s (real name Jarad Higgins) fans that inspired her to start the foundation.
“I was hurting, painful. And then I started receiving messages from people, how [Jarad’s] music helped them with depression and anxiety. And I felt like it was a void. I felt like it was my obligation to continue that message—Jarad’s message of healing—’cause he really touched on mental health in his music. He talked about mental health. So, I felt like as his mom, I needed to carry that forward,” she told the publication.
Wallace believes that it’s important to speak about Higgin’s substance abuse issues, in an attempt to help other people who may be struggling with the same thing.
“Transparency I think is important. And I think it’s important for other people to heal. And I know the world sees him as Juice WRLD, I see him as Jarad, and just normalize our conversation around him and his experience,” she said.
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“The same way I am is the same way I was with him. I was transparent. We talked about drugs and his use. We talked about him getting help. He knows I would do something like this. He knew that I would be the one with a mission of helping others. It’s not necessarily to, you know, glorify his drug use, for a lack of a better word. It’s for a fact that, hey, this is real. I don’t want to glorify drugs. I just want you to see the outcome of it. The outcome of what can happen if you allow yourself to stay in that state,” she added.
Wallace shared that she considers the mental health and substance abuse foundation she’s built to be the primary way that she’s keeping Juice WRLD’s legacy going strong, but shared she has other projects to honour her late son.
“I think the foundation is the biggest thing. And then I’m building a brewery [Homewood Brewing Company] in our old neighborhood in his honor. So, that as well because Homewood was special to us. I moved there because he wanted to go to the high school, so I bought a house there.”
“It was coming off a hard time financially that I just kept working and working hard where I could provide for him. A home and a nice community with a nice high school that he loved. So, it was special. Our time there was special. He loved it. And so, I just felt I wanted to just give back to the community and serve and honor him because he loved it so much. So, those things really just keep me really busy.”
You can read the full interview between Juice WRLD’S mum and XXL here and you can find out more about the Live Free 999 Foundation here.
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Watch ‘Lucid Dreams’ by Juice WRLD:
