Late Chicago rapper Juice WRLD’s third and final posthumous album, “The Party Never Ends,” dropped on Nov. 29. After a series of heightened hopes and broken promises about the album’s launch, Grade A Productions finally delivered Juice WRLD’s concluding project just nine days before the fifth anniversary of his tragic passing. The album, running short of an hour, consists of 18 tracks hand-picked from the thousands of unreleased tracks Juice WRLD recorded before his death. Fans were promised a finale done in “the best way possible,” but perhaps this party was destined to fall short — rather than embracing Juice WRLD’s iconic melancholic sound, the project instead dillydallies with hype upbeat choruses that reappear in every other song. The party may go on, but the host is long gone.
The album begins with the title track, “The Party Never Ends,” using a concert audio clip to introduce the artist and tell fans to “get their cellphone light up right now” and “put it up.” The song opens as a bass-boosted anthem with the high-energy feel of a live performance but transitions into a slower and more distorted sound, ending with the lyrics “I said it first, the party never ends / I’ma see you on the other side.” It’s an opener that perfectly captures both the excitement and sadness of a final Juice WRLD album, balancing the two emotions and bringing teary eyes to all the fans who waited four long years.
However, the album devolves into a succession of repetitive beats, rhymes and flows. The second track, “Misfit,” features a chilling stanza where Juice WRLD predicts his own death due to overdose, but the rest of the song is relatively uninspiring and, to an extent, poorly produced — there’s a distracting and unintended-sounding echo effect in the background throughout the verses. Listeners then arrive at two back-to-back songs that each flaunt a big-name feature, “AGATS2” with Nicki Minaj and “Lace It” with Eminem. “Lace It” fares better than the former in its musicality, but slowly kills audience interest as Eminem begins rapping what feels like a drug prevention PSA in the middle of the song.
Grade A Productions’ inability to properly deal with Juice WRLD’s crippling substance abuse becomes a recurring theme in this album. More than anything, it appears that the team behind this project wanted to emphasize his addiction. Grade A Productions’ choice to stubbornly fill the album with upbeat songs results in terrible execution — one singular verse from Eminem telling kids to not do drugs amid 10 hype concert jams about popping “perkies” is not the correct approach. Pretending everything was rainbows and sunshine is not respecting Juice WRLD’s legacy; acknowledging his sadness and genuine struggle with fame is.
Juice WRLD has countless songs where he realizes that his addiction will be the end of him; in the unreleased “In the Dark,” Juice WRLD sings, “I'm, I'm livin' in doubt / In fear the drugs'll kill me early, that they're checking me out / I gotta get sober, but sometimes it's hard livin' without / The only thing besides Lotti that really makes me smile.” These “sad” songs are more powerful than any anti-drug advertising, and it’s disappointing that they were excluded from the album just because they don’t fit the rhetoric of a perfect ending.
Nonetheless, Juice WRLD’s vocal talent and artistic ability still clearly shine through in the two amazing tracks “Party By Myself” and “Adore You.” Both songs feel like desperately needed throwbacks, containing the sensitive and thoughtful melodic rap sound that set his earlier works apart. “Adore You” is easily the best song in “The Party Never Ends.” It’s filled with optimism — one of the only tracks on this album that doesn’t force a sense of happiness — and is generally a beautiful love song, if the listener can look past the fact that the recipient of the song is allegedly selling him out on her Onlyfans account.
However, with the exception of “Best Friend,” another streak of bland, copy-paste hype tracks permeates the album until it ends with an uplifting message from Juice WRLD to his fans in “Spend It.” “The Party Never Ends,” in a sense, is a reflection of everything and everyone that failed Juice WRLD — from the team at Grade A Productions to co-owner Lil Bibby to lead producer Benny Blanco and to ex-girlfriend Ally Lotti, every person left a tainted mark on Juice WRLD’s farewell. From solely a musical standpoint, this project certainly has replay value, but given the context and importance to the late rapper’s legacy, it is more than a sad ending. “The Party Never Ends” may have promised an everlasting party, but after the unbelievably poor execution from those closest to him, it’s time for fans to wave a final goodbye.
RATING: 2/5
