Juice Wrld Teaches How To Freestyle Rap In 3 Steps
“But um, I got you though… (raps an entire Eminem verse from start to finish)
I’m cancerous, so when I diss, you wouldn’t wanna answer this / If you responded back with a battle rap you wrote for Canibus…
Just being such a sponge as a kid, absorbing all the music and s**t that i would listen to and just cramming my head with it.
Not really giving a f**k about school or really anything else besides music. That’s all i cared about” — Juice Wrld on Montreality
In this clip from Juice WRLD’s appearance on Montreality, we see one of the cornerstones of what made him an unlikely titan among the ranks of freestyle rappers…
#1 Always Be Obsessed With The Skill
Although he’s perhaps best known as one of the leading lights of hip-hop’s melodic wave, the late Chicago born rapper lesser known as Jarad Anthony Higgins was formidably talented when it came to simply crafting syllables and bars off to the top of his head.
And as to how he got that way, it’s clear that at the core of his propensity for rapid-fire, internal penmanship was that he was absolutely besotted with the art of freestyling and what that creative experience entailed.
So, like Juice, you too should allow yourself to be obsessed with it much as Juice was.
Although he arrived in an era where the ability to place faith in your natural creativity and conjure up rhymes from what feels like thin air wasn’t a priority…
Juice’s decision to constantly advance his adeptness in this area was ultimately one of the most versatile tools in his disposal that bled into both his recorded output and the endless videos of him spitting for hours that can be found across YouTube.
A love affair which legitimized him to the supposed old heads that’d built up a tendency to scornfully overlook anyone whose approach to rap veered towards the melodic side, to watch him freestyle was to watch him solving equations in real-time, finding his pocket and locking in on a rhyme scheme while always thinking ahead to the next adjoining bars or a logical point to pivot to another flow.
And quite simply, this wouldn’t be possible without the degree of immersion that he permitted for himself.
After all, Juice began to spit bars while his mental faculties were still developing and as such, it carved a pathway in his brain:
“That’s something that’s been in my life, my whole life.I think i started freestyling when I was real, real young. Think maybe about second or third grade.
Big Boy- you started freestyling? Or just really enjoying music?
Juice- I been enjoying music forever”- Juice Wrld on Big Boy’s Neighborhood.
No one’s suggesting that you find a time machine or that you lead with the same impenetrable single mindedness as him, but that doesn’t change the fact that if you wish to have the skills to demolish any beat that’s put in front of you at a moment’s notice…
Then it has to become an every-day consideration that encroaches in moment’s beyond the freestyle arena itself.
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Freestyling ability isn’t god-given, it has to be nurtured and Juice did that to the extent that it became as simple as breathing. And, that brings us directly to the next teaching in the book of Juice WRLD:
#2 Don’t Overthink The Freestyle
“With my music, I don’t overthink it… music is really just, people love to hear something that came out that’s good, that’s natural, that doesn’t sound forced, that sounds authentic, people love that.
So, even, certain breaths and little sounds that people make between the words can make a song a hit! Just like the cadence and the way that they breathing, the way their mouth is moving, I just let what flows out of me flow. If it sounds like something that needs to be spazzed on, then I spazz-
35:09- You never write, right?
Juice- Never. It’s like freehand vs tracing.
Adam- You don’t think you could end up with something better if you sometimes wrote some stuff?
Juice- Nope.. f**k that”– JUICE WRLD on No Jumper 34:12-
For Juice, the process of refining his rhymes in the traditional sense simply didn’t hold weight.
Instead, what he has termed as his “freehand approach” allows for his brain to operate in a tangential way.
As a result, he opened himself up to the entire spectrum of possibilities without pressuring himself.
After all, Juice didn’t even necessarily realize that Lucid Dreams, the very track that made him into a superstar, amounted to anything more than another song.
But, once again, this sense of creatively beneficial freedom isn’t something that’ll simply emerge overnight.
In order to be able to renounce that tendency to over analyze, the brain has to be calloused to letting creativity flow.
In freestyling, that organic feel is pivotal and requires a degree of trust in yourself.
So, much like Juice espoused in an interview, it might be handy to cultivate a healthy sense of self-esteem and self-image which will help you to trust in yourself.
“Some artists not only have good music but good personalities as well. I don’t wanna brag about myself, but people have told me that my personality matches my music — as in it has quality, as in it’s genuine and it’s real”, he told NME. “With me, people don’t have to separate the art from the artist.”
By believing in his own likelihood to succeed in any given situation pertaining to rhyming, Juice performed in a way that was not only hugely impressive, but uninhibited.
And when it comes to how he made himself into a beacon of hope for those who felt the art had been lost, this would’ve been an impossibility if he entered the game with any degree of reticence about his approach.
So, next up, we have another key component that made Juice who he was and that was his ability to suppress fear of failure or judgment.
#3 Suppress Your Fears
“Juice WRLD- Huh? Freestyle? I’ll freestyle. Come on, I’ll rap. Off the dome too? Yeah.
Interviewer- Ready?
Juice- Yeah”– Juice during a radio interview
Willing to spit at the drop of a hat, sometimes for upwards of an hour, on radio shows, this video shows Juice’s innate belief in his abilities, and above all else, his distinct lack of a concern with failing.
In any walk of life, that self-preserving concerns over being made to look foolish is perhaps the number one barrier to taking a leap into finding the success you deserve and that’s no different in freestyling.
Let’s not forget, Juice was so content with what he was delivering and his ability to recover that a moment where he floundered remained on his album unedited.
On “Feeling” from Death Race For Love, he made an admission of his own error when he declared that
“Boy, it’s ain’t no ‘I’ in team but it’s an ‘M-E’ in team (f**k)
I meant it’s a ‘me’ in team (Yeah)
I know I just f****d up, but b**ch, I’m still the freestyle king, whoa”
While this would be seen as a cardinal sin by some, this rawness and willingness to momentarily falter is part of what made listening to Juice so engaging and it’s something which, you, in your own way, would do well to uncover and embrace.
As when you put in the time and don’t put too much of an emphasis on perfectionism, you can even endure an interruption and immediately hop back in the pocket.
“Hit you in the chest, I ain’t got no time for the battle rap. You gonna come back when you’re done doing your hair
Ally Lotti- Yep.
Juice- Bet that, hit him in his face you forget that, uh, run up in your trap, where the shit at. Designer on me, no mismatch, uh, break a bitch off like a kitkat” — Juice Freestyling for Chris Long– 0:41
Able to parlay what’s going on in his surroundings into his bars, what Juice is saying might not be the most elaborate bar work you’ve ever heard, but it’s inherently thrilling to hear. And, as is often the case, Juice was acutely aware that sometimes, it’s not what you say, but how you say it.
“I could do what I want with a song. With a good idea, I could make something lit even if I’m talking about something random, it’s the energy that will make it a good song. How do you think people will get on the radio saying one word for two minutes?- Juice breaks down Lucid Dreams -00:00
The idea is likely blasphemous to some, but minimalism has had its place since the outset of the genre. As such, even if you’re intent on delivering verbal virtuosity with an incredibly diverse array of obscure phrases or you’re aiming to keep it simplistic, Juice’s lesson here is that you can’t underestimate delivery nor energy..
As sometimes, when Juice is even using his stock phrases during a freestyle, it could ring with more efficacy than the most dexterous wordplay. As at the end of the day, it all just depends on what the track or moment requires. Thus, you must be malleable and above all, prepared.
But by that same token, it shouldn’t always be treated with the utmost severity as don’t lose sight of the fact that when you first started rhyming, it wasn’t for acclaim, but for the love of doing so. As such, you need to safeguard that love and, as Juice’s fifth and final teaching and that is, above all else, share yourself with the world on your terms.
Big Boy- how did you know when you had turned a corner with the Soundcloud?
I just… I just… I never really paid for publicity, I just dropped music on Soundcloud and then reposted it on my Twitter.
Big Boy- Did you know that people were paying attention or were you just dropping music like, I’m just gonna flood?
Juice- I was just dropping music when I felt it was time… My numbers were big to me at that time, but I got in contact with Herb and them.
10:10- guest host- Is that a hard adjustment going from being on your own timeline, posting whatever you want to being in the industry and people demanding things from you?
Juice- At the end of the day, I can still post whatever I want on Soundcloud. It might not make the most business sense cos this is a living now, it’s not just a hobby but like, I can post whatever on Soundcloud. Juice WRLD on Big Boy’s Neighborhood- 9:02
In every possible way, Juice was indebted to music as it was his path and passion in life. So, for him, even as the millions rolled in, the business was always secondary.
Never a vocational necessity nor a chore to undertake, but the thing that kept him ticking, Juice was perpetually stockpiling music, with some estimates suggesting that there remains an incredible amount of unheard Juice WRLD tracks still lingering in the archives.
“I have so much music that I don’t need to bring back something old”, he informed Forbes in 2019. “I probably have over a thousand songs. That’s my release. And the songs just pile up. I’m recording every day, making like five to 10 songs a day, mostly.”
Simply put, Juice’s ravenous appetite for creating is something that every freestyle rapper should seek to emulate. Not to mention, his hellacious work ethic. This is the man who famously Death Race For Love in 72 hours and laid down its second single “Hear Me Calling” after he’d ran through every other beat that Purps of 808 Mafia had provided for him.
Purps- The day we worked on Hear Me Calling, I think we did at least like, three tracks prior to that.It was like 4 in the morning, we were like, super tired. We were just, like, ok, I’m gonna knock out one more. I play him the beat and he’s like damn, what’s that?
And I’m like, oh s**t, I didn’t really wanna play you that beat’ and he’s like hold on, play it. Loads, it up, kid knocked it out the park in like 40 minutes, freestyle the whole thing. It was done. — Purps on Deconstructed for Hear Me Calling- 0:05
Seen as an outlet for what was occurring within him, Juice would simply grab a beat, turn on the mic and go, not only keeping his sharpness intact, but creating beauty along the way.
Rhyming was embedded into his everyday processes and resided at the forefront of his heart.
As such, this meant that when that red light went on and a DJ looked on at him expectantly, he wasn’t straining, but slipping into a familiar pattern of thinking.
And if you can prioritize the construction of bars as a priority and reason for being in much the same way Juice did, there’s no reason why you can’t become just as revered as he was in that respect.
