Christian Rap Urges Hip-Hop to be Better Example After Juice WRLD’s Passing

An all too common storyline in hip-hop has become the untimely passing of its brightest stars. On December 8th, a freshly 21-one-year-old Juice WRLD overdosed on Percocet pills at an airport. In 2018 XXXtentacion was killed in a car shooting and Mac Miller overdosed. The year before that, Lil Peep died of an overdose.

“We have got to change Hip-Hop it wasn’t made to glorify drugs, objectify women and promote violence. It was meant to give a voice to the oppressed. Yet the music we make today oppresses our own people and paints the image that all of this is okay. We have to stop it’s killing us,” singer/rapper Byron Juane pleaded through a Tweet.

That was preceded by this tweet:

Juice WRLD was most known for his smash single “Lucid Dreams” that carried the torch of “Cloud Rap.” The music is a mixture of trap and emo rock that has literally changed the industry and the notion of rap music. Juice was universally loved by many artists because of his youth and out of the box music. Tragically, he had recently said he was trying to clean up his act. He also admitted that he was inspired to try lean because of Future’s glorification of it. This is something Future apologized for and then the two went on to make an album called WRLD on Drugs.

This drives Byron’s point home the most. Young people are looking up to their idols to make decisions. Young artists are trying to emulate the artists they want to be.

“I just want people to know I’m not here to judge or say what is right or wrong,” he said to Rapzilla. “Regardless of what we do, words have weight to them and we should always aim to spread positivity and love with them.”

Ruslan had a bit to say on it too:

Lawren also reflected on things that were happening in the 90s and early 2000s as well.

His generation of rappers Tupac, Biggie, Big L, and then Jam Master J and an attempt on 50 Cent all were victims of unnecessary violence. Every generation has its woes played out in the public eye. Unfortunately, for these young artists, drugs have a stronghold in their lives. This also brought up a valid point from Derek Minor which sparked a broader discussion.
Derek Minor

Regardless of the whys and what’s that cause these tragedies to happen, the loss of life, albeit a young-talented person, hits to the core. Pray for your heroes and pray that collectively, the culture begins to wake up from the glorification of things that are destroying it. For every Juice WRLD, there are hundreds of other kids, teens, adults, parents, grandparents, that are hooked in an endless cycle of depression and self-medication.

Justin Sarachik
Justin Sarachik
Justin is the Editor-in-Chief of Rapzilla.com. He has been a journalist for over a decade and has written or edited for Relevant, Christian Post, BREATHEcast, CCM, Broken Records Magazine, & more. He's written over 10,000 articles, done over 1,000 interviews, and is in post-production for documentaries on Danny "D-Boy" Rodriguez & Mario "Machete" Perez. He's the project manager of the upcoming video game Run the Court and of the media brand Crimefaces. Justin likes to work with indie artists to develop their brands & marketing strategies. Catch him interviewing artists on Survival of the Artist Podcast & creating videos on his social media channels.
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