The AFI Fest Documentary Audience Award-winning documentary Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss, which premieres this week on HBO, explores the brief life and lasting legacy of hip-hop superstar Juice WRLD, a.k.a. Jarad Anthony Higgins, who tragically died on Dec. 8, 2019 — less than a week after his 21st birthday — from an oxycodone/codeine overdose while flying from L.A. to Chicago. Directed by Tommy Oliver (40 Years a Prisoner) and released by Bill Simmons’s Ringer Entertainment, the film draws from hundreds of hours of previously unseen footage, shot during Higgins’s final two years by videographers Steve Cannon and Chris Long. Oliver’s unsparing portrayal of the young, troubled genius — letting raw scenes of the “Lucid Dreams” rapper partying, recording, and freestyling tell the story, without any embellishment, editorializing, or pandering — makes for powerful viewing.
Yahoo Entertainment/SiriusXM Volume spoke with Oliver at length about why the music and story of Juice WRLD (who is still Spotify’s third-most streamed artist in the U.S., right behind Drake and Taylor Swift, and the 10th-most-streamed globally) continues to resonate two years after his death; how he changed and saved lives during his short career; and why he should be held in the same esteem as the late Kurt Cobain.
Read the interview (it is a very powerful one):