Juice WRLD sells 1 million units for two albums in 2020

Juice WRLD’s success is worth noting because it confirms what we’ve already been banging on about for months – that emo trap and emotive pop continues to dominate and define Gen Z’s music tastes.

We wrote recently about how hip-hop music has become increasingly synonymous with mental health discussion over the past twenty years, and Juice’s dominance – even posthumously – is indication to suggest this will continue well into the next decade.

The two albums that reached 1 million include Death Race for Love, which dropped in March 2019, as well as Legends Never Die, which released this past summer. Both featured a ton of heavyweight names that you’d expect from this genre, such as Trippie Red, Marshmello, and Kid Laroi, which no doubt helped – but Juice’s overwhelming popularity can’t be understated.

Expect Juice to remain prominent even next year, particularly if his label releases new material as singles. Lil Peep, Mac Miller, and XXXTentacion all saw frequent projects thrown out to the public beyond twelve months after their deaths, for better or worse, and it’ll be interesting to see how Juice WRLD’s image is handled going forward.

For now, expect plenty more emo-tinged trap bangers to surge to the top of the charts. While we can’t hear genuine new material from pioneer artists like Juice ever again, he’ll remain a popular name both culturally and commercially for a long while yet. We could even see a third chart topping album break records in 2021, who knows.

Here’s to another year of banging music to get us through these never-ending lockdowns. Lord knows we need it right now.