Behind the Name: Juice WRLD

June 28, 2023 5:00 pm

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This past weekend, Juice WRLD posthumously tributed Eminem with his new song “Doomsday,” featuring Cordae. The song was released as the lead single for Cole Bennett’s first Lyrical Lemonade album. Throughout his career, cut short with his tragic death in late 2019, Juice often paid homage to many of his rap heroes, evident in his 2018 collaborative album with Atlanta icon Future and even in his stage name.

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Before achieving the gargantuan heights of fame that he did in the late 2010s, Juice WRLD instead went by the name Juice The Kidd, releasing songs on the platform SoundCloud for his slowly growing audience. Eventually, though, just before the release of his 2018 debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance, he would swap “The Kidd” for “WRLD” in his moniker.

“The people I was working with, we all agreed I needed something different,” the late emcee said during a July 2018 interview with the Durtty Daily YouTube show.

Keeping the phrase Juice in his name, though, he would go on to explain that he got the name from the 1992 drama film Juice starring Tupac. Considering he used to have the same hairstyle Pac did in the movie and was a big fan of the fallen rap legend, Juice WRLD knew he wanted that to be included in his stage name.

“So with Juice, originally I had the name because I had the haircut and everybody knew I liked that movie with Tupac so that’s what that was about,” he said during a May 2018 interview with Nas’ label and company Mass Appeal.

For a while, though, the “WRLD” portion that replaced “The Kidd” was really an arbitrary decision, as he noted before that he just wanted something different. As many fans note, though, WRLD spelled without the letter O is completely unique to Juice but came to him totally by happenstance.

“For the WRLD, it came from a social media handle,” he told Durtty Daily. “I couldn’t spell it like ‘world’ because somebody already had it (on Instagram) I guess. The ‘WRLD’ (didn’t) really have no meaning until I recently found meaning in the name. It just represents being global and taking over the world. Globally known, and heard globally.”

Currently, Juice’s estate and his former record label Grade A are working on his final posthumous album titled The Party Never Ends, which will be the third full-length release from him since his death.

Photo by Arik Mazur/WireImage