Into the Abyss — Generational voices & parenting lessons from Juice WRLD
Written December 2021
Docu-Prelude
I just watched Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss, HBO's latest Music Box documentary about the life and tragic death of Jarad Anthony Higgins, the beloved superstar rapper known around the world as Juice WRLD.
Every life is a rich, complex, multi-layered tapestry. Unless we consciously and curiously dig into the lives of those around us it's very hard to know and fully understand them. Documentaries open windows into the rich detail of people's lives that would otherwise remain hidden from view. They are a brand of storytelling that when done well broaden our aperture, lift the veil from our biases, and reshape our perspectives.
Into the Abyss delivers on all these fronts and more. In addition to completely reshaping my view of Juice WRLD as both a person and an artist, the film helped me to make sense of and better understand something that had happened in my own life several years earlier.
Generational Voices
I was first made aware of Juice WRLD in 2017 when my then-teenage son introduced me to his music. I didn’t like it or get it at all. My son and I don't necessarily agree on every song or artist, but never before had our opinions diverged so radically. I wondered why.
Despite this, it was essentially impossible to ignore Juice WRLD's growing popularity. Then, over the next 12 months the wunderkind exploded into public view, quickly becoming one of the biggest artists of his generation. There's no other way to put it — Juice WRLD's rise was epic, rapid, and meteoric. The numbers speak for themselves:
-MTV and Billboard named Juice WRLD Best New Artist in 2019.
-In 2020, Juice WRLD was Spotify's No. 1 artist across all genres in the U.S.
-In 18 months, Juice WRLD reached superstar-level fame, smashing streaming records and selling out shows.
-Interscope Records released Juice WRLD's Lucid Dreams in May 2018 (after previously being released on SoundCloud in June 2017) ultimately becoming one of the most streamed songs of all time, with over 2.5 billion streams in the US alone by 2021.
Even by today's social media-fueled, viral standards, Juice WRLD was a music juggernaut. By mid-2019, the young Atlanta rapper had eclipsed mere pop superstardom, becoming a cultural icon for his generation. Then, in December 2019, shockingly and tragically, Juice WRLD died.
HBO debuted Juice WRLD: Into the Abyss in December 2021, two years to the month after Juice WRLD's tragic death. Watching the documentary, listening to the music, and viewing footage of the young rapper — at work in the studio, performing live on stage, hanging out with his girlfriend, interacting with his fans, and free-styling at will on deeply personal issues — I began to appreciate the why of Juice WRLD's hold on popular culture. I also began to understand the genuine and deeply heartfelt devotion his fans felt towards him.
While watching the documentary it began to dawn on me that Juice WRLD just may have been to Generation Z music fans what Prince, Kurt Cobain, and Biggie Smalls were to Generation X music fans, and Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, and Janis Joplin were to the baby boomer — rare generational talents that emerge as the voice of a generation. I pretty certain he was.
Watching the film, there’s little doubt that Juice WRLD was an enormously, even freakishly, gifted talent. But talent alone doesn't get you a seat at the table in that rarified air of generational voices. What I believe puts him there, however, is the intensity and depth with which he spoke to the heart of his generation in their very specific language of openness and vulnerability. In so doing, Juice WRLD captured the zeitgeist of today's youth at a level none of his peers did. His unrelenting authenticity and dogged insistence to rap about lost opportunities and mental health issues set him apart, resonating with millions of young Generation Z fans struggling with the broken promises of the American ideal and the loss of the American dream.
Paying Attention
Being a highly visible and generously available parent has very important to me. So was genuinely knowing and understanding my children, their friends, and their world. Given this and the earnestly deep and open relationship I share with both of my children, I always believed that I would see the signs of trouble or challenges they were struggling with long before the consequences of such problems pierced their everyday lives. As I watched Into the Abyss, it dawned on me, painfully, that while I now understood Juice WRLD's influence on today's youth culture, I had failed to see his influence on my own son and the brewing trouble that influence represented.
Ever since my son was a young boy, he and I have bonded over many shared hobbies and interests. At the top of this list was music — discussing, debating, and listening to great artists and searching out new, up and coming ones. I distinctly recall the afternoon we excitedly gathered in his bedroom to listen to J. Cole's hotly anticipated, just released Revenge of the Dreamers III album. By this time he'd long been one of our shared favorites. We methodically listened to every track, song by song, until we'd gotten through the whole album. Then we listened to it a second time. Doing this hundreds of times with dozens of artists over the years still resonates among my favorite shared memories with my son.
When both of my children were younger it was me excitedly introducing them to my artists — Prince, Stevie Wonder, MJ, Biggie, Tupac, Em, The Stones, Pearl Jam, Whitney Houston. On and on. However, by the time they reached their early teens years, this music show-n-tell tradition quickly reversed course. Now it was them introducing their artists to me. I loved it. And I'm certain they did, too. My son, in particular, loved and really appreciated my unabashed interest in his generation's artists. Given his love of music and the importance and centrality of it in his life, listening together with his dad for a new album's hits and misses, storylines, and mysteries meant a lot to us both.
Several months after that Revenge of the Dreamers III listening session, Juice WRLD released his second studio album, Death Race for Love. It was the last album he'd release during his lifetime. New album, same tradition. We sat and listened to and discussed and debated every song. This listening session was no different than his every prior attempt to introduce me to Juice WRLD's music. He loved it, I hated it; he thought I didn't know what I was talking about, I thought he was clueless.
But there was something else was going on that day, something I hadn't seen or noticed before when listening to Juice WRLD’s music with my son. I had known that Juice WRLD's lyrics spoke very deeply to him, but this was different. I just couldn't figure out what or why. What was he hearing and getting from the lyrics that I couldn't decipher? What was I missing? Why did these lyrics to these songs, in particular, reach him and touch him as deeply as they appeared to? What was it about Juice WRLD's music that spoke to him so deeply?
Two years, watching Into the Abyss, I finally understood.
From Abyss to Understanding
If you want to know — really, really know — the people around you at a deep level, knowing their interests, dreams, and inspirations, while important, will only get you part of the way there. Like anything else really, if you want to know more, you need dig more. And when it comes to knowing people deeply, it's crucial to understand the specifics of the world they inhabit, the people they spend the most time with and why, and their various circles of influence, etc.
DIGRESSION IN — SHORT SCIENCE SIDEBAR: Sociologists and psychologists have known for a while now that we are an amalgamation of our environment, upbringing, and experiences, particularly formative ones that uniquely shape who we become. Once we reach our teenage years, the role of family, in many ways, begins to take a back seat to outside influences, like teachers, mentors, counselors, coaches, and especially, friends. According to Erikson's stages of psychosocial development, adolescence is a time when young people seek identity and belonging outside of their family unit, making the influence of peers and mentors increasingly significant. Additionally, the media we consume also plays an outsized role in our emotional development. Research shows that music preferences, in particular, provide a knowing window into a person's inner world as music is highly linked to emotional and social well-being. DIGRESSION OUT
My son is a beautiful, special human being. Yes, I know, I'm biased. He's sincerely caring, broadly interested, and deeply curious. Like an all-seeing human surveillance system, he doesn't miss a single thing. He loves his friends more than anyone I've ever known. Before his tenth birthday, he was already cooking, gardening, and fishing far beyond adult hobbyist proficiency level. He's one of those people who's annoyingly good at everything he does. At the foundational center of all this has always been music. He loves music. He need only listen to a song a single time to know every lyric. I've never understood that one. As for many of us, music has always played an outsized role in his life. It's like a language for him, a channel through which he expresses, understands, learns, and processes his emotions. As a father, paying careful attention to this helped to clue me in to things he may be thinking about, feeling, and sometimes struggling with.
Given all this, it wasn't especially surprising to me that he was so drawn in by Juice WRLD's music. What surprised me and definitely caught me off guard was the level of intensity with which he felt and experienced the lyrics and what that represented in his life. Recall that I did not like or understand Juice WRLD's music at all. And so, even despite seeing what I saw, I failed to reach beyond my own curiosity to understand what all this meant and represented for him, specifically.
Over the next half year, as my son transitioned from junior high to high school, his mom and I began to see significant and concerning changes in him. He went from being an engaged, enthusiastic 13 and 14 year old—excited to share his world with me—to becoming more withdrawn, spending more time alone, and responding with one-word answers. The bright, ever-present sunshine on his face faded to a drawn out wash. Weeks, then months went by without our eyes meeting over a shared opinion or an unspoken understanding.
Whatever it was that he had either been consciously or unconsciously communicating months earlier during our Death Race for Love listening session had taken hold of him and was now beginning to take him away. Watching the brightness fade from his eyes left me and his mom feeling helpless, unsure of how to reach him or support him. I didn't know this at the time, but had I looked more deeply into what Juice WRLD represented for a generation of devoted fans — struggle and hopelessness— I might have realized what my son was experiencing. I might have realized that he was grappling with challenges and fears all too common for young people—obstacles that were starting to overwhelm him. Had I really been doing what I long prided myself on, I would have seen that music had become an outlet for emotions he couldn't or wouldn't express directly.
…And then he really went through it. We all did.
Forged Through Fire
Nearly three years later, with those particular struggles now firmly in the rearview, I can safely and proudly say that despite the pain and setbacks, my son’s journey was an essential one, a true gift that, in so many ways shaped who he is today. It took time, patience, and an ocean of resilience on his part, but none of us regret it. In fact, we’re grateful for it.
It's an old trope, but it is indeed true. It takes a while to understand that the difficult experiences and great challenges we go through are our best teachers and greatest gifts. In this way, life has a strange and funny sense of humor. It walks us up one side of the mountain — up, up, up — only to tumble us down into the next valley — down, down, down. Each walk up showing us what we need to learn but can't yet see, and each fall down teaching us what we need to know to reach the next peak. This experience, in particular, wasn't just one that turned a teenager into a man, it benefitted the rest of us, too — like a real life Nightmare on Elm Street turned into It's a Wonderful Life.
As a parent, this experience taught me and reminded me over and over that despite what we think we know and what we think we're good at, there's always room for more. More improvement, more practice, more listening and careful observation. It taught me the importance of dogged presence—not just observing the outward aspects of those around you, especially your children or those in your charge, but in taking notice of the subtle shifts in mood, the quiet moments of withdrawal, the changes in behavior that hint at deeper struggles. These nuanced, often hidden signs, many times, reveal more than words ever could.
When the Student Is Ready the Teacher Will Appear
I often talk and write about the many things my children have taught me over the years. I've always struggled to understand why as adults we too often see ourselves as the all-knowing teachers, while conveniently forgetting that what we really are, and always will be, is students of life, for life.
I love the quote: When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. As a parent, it took me a long time to understand the deep nuance hidden inside this sagacious pearl of wisdom. We've all heard young people say they understand when it's clear they don't. We've also have all heard older, wiser people say that the more they know, the less they realize they understand. The truth is none of us know, or will ever know, everything. This is the very impossibility that makes all of us students for all of our lives.
The relationships between students and teachers, children and parents, employees and bosses, players and coaches, etc are far more of a two-way partnership than a one-way dictatorship. This is more important today than ever. The world around us is changing so rapidly, that those who aren't in constant learning mode risk missing out or being left behind. This is one of the most important reasons why we need stay open and curious about learning from those around us, especially our children.
Three Essentials for Understanding Our Children
Parenting today is about far more than providing a roof, making rules, and setting boundaries. In a vastly complex, fast-changing world, where the generational shift is perhaps greater than its ever been, parents today are more at risk than ever at missing their children's struggles and challenges. We need to treat the task of deeply connecting with our children with the dedication of mastering a craft. There are, of course, many elements to this, but three foundational essentials stand out:
- First, parents who want to genuinely know and understand their children need to put in the reps. To deeply understand and master anything—including knowing our children—we need to devote more time to practicing it. This isn't just about spending time with our children; it’s about the quality of that time which should be unstructured and without condition or agenda. A good way tot think of it is to imagine two five-year-olds spending an afternoon at play together—they simply spend it, fully in and ever present.
- Second, parents who want to genuinely know and understand their children must to listen to everything our children say. As parents, we plan, make rules, model behaviors and values, and teach, but we too often forget to just listen. We need to listen without condition or judgment—our children need to feel safe when they talk to us. We need to listen without time or subject restrictions—showing boredom or disinterest can close the door forever to crucial conversations. Finally, we need to listen with with genuine interest and curiosity. This signals to our children that they are important and that their voice matters. A year or so prior to the events I've written about here, my daughter shared something with me that seemed trivial at the time, but turned out to be extremely significant. Had I been on my phone or listening with half an ear, I easily could have missed, forgotten, or set aside what she told me that day. Thank god I didn't.
- Third, parents who want to genuinely know and understand their children need to listen to and watch out for all those things our children aren’t saying and aren't doping. We need to be just as curious about all the things they leave unspoken. What are they communicating through silence, through changes in behavior, or through subtle cues that they can't or won’t put into words? Learning to read between the lines is just as important as listening to the words they say.
These three practices—taking the time and being present without conditions, actively listening, and actively watching out for the unspoken—build a circle of trust and love between children and parents. A love and trust that is crucial to establish before they reach their complex and exceedingly difficult and challenging teen years, when they typically turn away from us. These things also foster openness\ and the ability to connect deeply, even in times of struggle.
Closing words
I mentioned earlier the many, many things my children have taught me over their lives. This, undoubtedly, includes nearly everything I've spoken about here. It would be great to take the credit and applause for being such an open and consistently available father, but that's really not on me. For reasons I'm never likely to know, my children demanded and expected engagement, interaction, and close attention. When they were both still very young — three and eight, respectively — their mom and I divorced. This was obviously hard on all of us. See Sleep pretty darlings, do not cry, I will sing a lullaby…. But, rather than withdraw or rebel at the time (although there was plenty of that in later years) both of them sunk their teeth into their family. They weren't willing and simply didn't allow lat As I’ve learned from my journey with my son, the ability to truly know our children requires dedication and effort. It means being present, listening closely, and embracing the moments they choose not to speak. Only then can we help guide them through the struggles they face and truly be the parents they need.