When Juice WRLD died of an accidental overdose in December, a small subset of the population placed the blame at Future’s feet.
Juice WRLD infamously detailed how he told Future during their first meeting that he influenced the young Chicago rapper to try lean at a young age. “When he told me that, I was like ‘Oh shit. What the fuck have I done?’” Future told Rolling Stone in 2019. “It really bothered me. It bothered me a lot. More than that I thought it would bother me when he told me that.”
The duo would go on to collaborate for the full-length project, Wrld on Drugs. In a new XXL cover story, Future briefly shares his thoughts on the rapper’s passing. “It was heartbreaking about Juice. Still to this day, I’m heartbroken,” Future said. “Rest in peace to Juice Wrld. He’s a great artist. He had so much more to do.”
“Me having an influence on that, I just feel like…that is not my intention,” he continued. “My intention was just to be me. I’m just being me and what you get from it is what you get from it, but at the same time, I wouldn’t want no one to go through anything to harm theyself or to bring death to theyself and Juice Wrld is a touchy situation. I’m heartbroken by the whole thing. My heart goes out to his family, his mom.”
In January, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office released a statement that Juice WRLD “died as a result of oxycodone and codeine toxicity.” In December, federal agents and police stopped the rapper at Midway Airport in Chicago and searched his private plane, turning up 41 bags of marijuana, six bottles of prescription codeine cough syrup, two 9 mm pistols, a .40-caliber pistol, a high-capacity ammunition magazine and metal-piercing bullets, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Later in the interview, Future offers his opinion on the recent string of rapper deaths — Mac Miller, Nipsey Hussle, Pop Smoke — denying any greater trend. “It’s like, a lot more rappers than back 10 years ago. So, now a lot of things more are going to occur. It’s a lot of young rappers that’s growing up super fast, that’s getting money super quick and don’t have classes on success,” Future notes. “You got to know when enough is enough because you in control of your own destiny and you don’t want to self-destruct.”
