Rapper Juice Wrld dies at 21 after seizure

Juice Wrld, the fast-rising young American rapper best known for his 2018 hit Lucid Dreams, has died shortly after suffering a seizure at Chicago’s Midway Airport. He was 21 years old.

A statement from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office said that Jarad A. Higgins had died on Sunday, according to The New York Times. The statement did not give a cause of death.

The news was first reported by TMZ, which cited law enforcement sources saying that the rapper experienced a seizure while walking through the airport, and was pronounced dead at a hospital shortly after.

Born and raised in Chicago, Juice had enjoyed a rapid ascension since he first began posting his songs to SoundCloud as a teenager in 2015, working in a style that blended elements of emo and rock with hip-hop.

His independently-released 2017 track Lucid Dreams proved to be a career-maker, rising steadily until an official single release in 2018 broke him on to the pop charts, where the song would peak at No. 2.

Signing to Interscope Records in early 2018, Juice released his debut album, Goodbye & Good Riddance, almost immediately after, which was certified platinum before the end of the year, and contained yet another No. 2 single in All Girls Are the Same.

His busy year continued with a summer in memoriam EP dedicated to late fellow SoundCloud rappers XXXTentacion and Lil Peep; a collaborative album with Future, Wrld on Drugs, which reached No. 2 on the album chart in October; and an original song on the soundtrack for the film Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse.

Juice released his second album, Death Race for Love, earlier this year. It was his first effort to reach No. 1 on the album chart. Also this year, he toured Europe with Nicki Minaj on a co-headlining bill.

-AAP