On March 8, 2019, hip hop artist Juice WRLD released his album titled “Death Race for Love.” The album is a whopping 22 songs long and lasts about 72 minutes, and the artist has much more to release as well. On March 22 the rapper released a tweet saying, “DRFL deluxe edition doeeeee?” Implying that he intends on releasing a deluxe edition of the album, adding on to the 22 songs that were released a month ago.

The album itself, while it has 22 songs, only has three featured artists, one of which is a common name in the music industry, Young Thug. Juice WRLD’s lyrics about heartbreak, problems in life, and his vocal range is portrayed constantly throughout the album, ensuring that every song is a different, unique listen. I would give this album an eight and out of ten. Juice WRLD’s lyrics, delivery and production in most of his songs are excellent and it is easy to go through the entire album without having to skip a song or two for the most part.

Prior to the release of the highly anticipated album, Juice WRLD released two songs in order to build up the hype for “DRFL.” On Feb 14, he released his song “Robbery.” This song talked about a prior relationship that ended poorly with a girl who who would not leave him alone and did not let him be himself. One thing that is not commonly known about “Robbery” was that it was initially released by Juice WRLD nine months earlier on an EP called “Bury Me Alive, I did It Again.” The EP had six songs on it, with two of them, “Robbery” and “Used To” (was “Bury Me Alive, I did It Again”) being released into his past two solo albums, “DRFL” and “Goodbye and Good Riddance”. Fans of Juice WRLD anticipate the release of songs like Slasher and GAME from the EP.

The other song Juice WRLD released in order to build anticipation for the album was the song “Hear Me Calling.” In “Hear Me Calling,” the artist is expressing his feelings over a girl who continues to avoid him regardless of how often he calls her. While the lyrics themself may seem sad the upbeat instrumentals and the delivery of the song makes it catchy and fun to sing along to.

The two early released songs, “Robbery” and “Hear Me Calling”, were staples of the album, but there are plenty of other songs in the album to make the anticipation worth it. There are eight other songs that are on par with those two, two of which are features with “Ring Ring” with Russian featuring Clever and “ON GOD” featuring Young Thug. Both of these songs feature artists who have different styles than Juice WRLD, making the change of pace flow well with the song, yet both of the feature artists are unique in their own way as well. Young Thug is more of a rapper whereas Clever is more of a singer. The other songs on the album that were on par were “Empty,” “HeMotions,” “Fast,” “Flaws and Sins,” “Feeling,” and “Make Believe.” What makes these songs stand out over the others are the catchiness of their choruses. While they may talk about more sad lyrics, the catchy choruses make them fun to sing and dance to.

I mentioned previously that there are one to two songs in the album that I would skip. Those two are “Syphilis” and “Out My Way.” In these two songs Juice WRLD strays away from his traditional rapping/singing style and goes towards a more shouting style of music which is hard to listen to. I would have given the album a nine to nine and a half out of ten had these two songs not been on it, as they did not add anything positive to the album and could have easily been left out.

“Death Race For Love” is an album well worth the hype it received. Most of the songs have unique lyrics and melodies that are easy to listen and sing along to. However, there are a couple of songs that are not worth listening to, and those do bring down the overall vibe of the album. Juice WRLD has plenty of music just waiting to be released and the quality of the songs in “DRFL” build anticipation for the future.