Late Chicago rapper Juice WRLD, has left his legacy among fans and the rap game as one of the biggest upcoming rappers in recent years, with his biggest hits including “All Girls Are The Same” and “Lucid Dreams,” which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard’s Hot 100 Charts.
Before his unfortunate passing in 2019, Juice WRLD had released two studio albums “Goodbye & Good Riddance” and “Death Race For Love” as well as 123 other charting tracks.
As many late artist’s labels do, Juice’s record label Grade A then released two more posthumous projects titled “Legends Never Die” and “Fighting Demons.”
In July of 2021, Juice WRLD’s manager Lil Bibby announced an additional and final project titled “The Party Never Ends” that was currently being put together. “The Party Never Ends” released for fans to experience on Nov. 29 2024, and contains what are referred to as “grails” (a highly anticipated snippet or leak).
Does this final posthumous album give his fanbase the conclusion Juice WRLD may have wanted for them?
Some tracks, such as “Misfit” or “Oxycodone” have odd mixing or mastering choices, such as the repeating sections of 808s (a style of drum or kick) in “Misfit” that make the drums sound over distorted.
Another example is in the track “Oxycodone,” where some of Juice’s lyrics sound poorly edited together, therefore losing a little bit of momentum throughout the tracks. Other than that, it’s hard to notice any mishaps on the technical side of the project.
In the end, it’s unknown whether these are mistakes that Juice WRLD’s manager made while composing the album or unfinished work by Juice himself not being cleaned up by his team before release.
While Lil Bibby said he did intend on making this album “sound like you’re at a Juice WRLD concert,” the audio cuts from past Juice WRLD performances do sometimes feel out of place in certain songs.
Although the first track (promptly titled “The Party Never Ends”) does include the audio sample perfectly fine, it’s songs like “Cuffed” in which the audio doesn’t fit in the grand scheme of things.
Other than the last 30 seconds of the track, “Cuffed” is a pretty entertaining song featuring fun bars such as “pull up in that Miracle Whip, all white, look like some mayo.”
The choice of order for the tracks is another little hiccup in the album, with the energy from track to track differing quite a lot depending on the section of tracks one is listening to.
The range of topics and energy in “Condone It” which talks about being rich, owning expensive watches and houses is not an ideal choice of a track to put before The Kid Laroi’s solo track “Goodbye.” This song seems to reflect on Laroi’s time with the late rapper and how he tries to cope with Juice’s passing as he reflects on “time well spent.”
The following song “Party By Myself” on the other hand is a good follow-up to The Kid Laroi’s solo track, keeping the same slower energy and feel. For those who are into Juice’s more emotional tracks, this track is a solid choice that helps balance out both his high energy and lower energy songs.
One track that maybe should’ve been kept in the vault is “Best Friend” featuring the band Fall Out Boy. This song seems to be in a situation similar to that of artist XXXTENTACION’s posthumous album “Bad Vibes Forever” in which artists that X had never worked with were placed on unfinished demos of his and put out as songs.
In “Best Friend”’s case, while Fall Out Boy’s feature does make sense, the fact that Juice and Fall Out Boy had never officially collaborated while he was alive does cheapen the song a little bit. Additionally, the first three quarters of the song do sound good until lead singer Patrick Stump comes in and completely changes the sound (not really in a positive direction) for about 30 seconds.
The Fall Out Boy feature comes off as almost unnatural and edited in, as the biggest clue to this being the complete change in instrumentals.
The last three tracks “Floor It,” “Oxycodone” and “Spend it” are all fine, but there may be a divide among listeners as to whether these songs are valid choices for the label to have added to Juice’s final album.
“The Party Never Ends” carries a mixed bag of both good and not so great pieces of work. What songs those may be are up to the listener and their type of relationship with Juice WRLD’s music.
While this album didn’t suffer a lot from the “Bad Vibes Forever” effect, there is definitely a concept there and it’s good his label declared this his final project.
