Chicago rapper
Juice WRLD quickly got swept into the emo-rap designation when his 2018 studio debut,
Goodbye & Good Riddance, showed up with a richly produced collection of songs about breakups, betrayal, and numbing the pain. Despite a limited emotional range, the album highlighted
Juice WRLD's musical dexterity, offering darkly dreamy melodies and druggy textures in complex arrangements that pushed aside standard commercial rap boundaries. Second album
Death Race for Love continues this hybrid of lush sonics and desperate feelings. Considerably longer than its predecessor with 22 tracks clocking in at over an hour, the predominant theme remains illuminating different angles of agony. "Empty" opens the album with tortured verses over sweet piano loops, and the hooky "Robbery" starts with
Juice WRLD drinking strong liquor before scream-crying lyrics about getting his heart handed to him in a paper bag. Pain turns to anger quickly on "Syphilis," with threatening verses yelled through a filter of distortion. Moods shift quickly, going from this overblown track into the syrupy acoustic guitars of "Who Shot Cupid?" and then directly into the almost pop rock tones of "Ring Ring." A
Young Thug feature on the bouncing "ON GOD" starts to illuminate the two faces of
Death Race for Love. There's the devastated outcry of heartbroken songs like the
Daniel Caesar-sampling "10 Feet" and the dark swagger of ominous bangers like "Out My Way." ~ Fred Thomas