Juice WRLD dead at 21: Tributes pour in from gaming community

The gaming and streaming community has paid tribute to Juice WRLD, a young but already acclaimed music artist who had been influential in the scene, after he died suddenly at age 21 on December 8.

As reported by TMZ, the Chicago-born rapper and singer, real name Jarad Higgins, died from a seizure in Chicago’s Midway airport.

As well as attaining mainstream success with his hits like Lucid Dreams, Juice WRLD was massively popular within the gaming and esports scene especially. He even pushed for streamers to play his music on stream following copyright concerns.

The rapper apologized to Twitch streamers in June of 2018 after numerous channels were struck down by bans for playing his music, stating: “My apologies for the people that got banned for listening to my music while streaming…I will do what I can to prevent that from happening again.”

Only two days prior to his death, top streamer Ninja had revealed that JuiceWRLD was the number one artist he had listened to throughout 2019.

Ninja led tributes to the late rapper, saying he was “heartbroken” by the news. Countless other streamers were also left devastated by the news.

Professional esports players including CS:GO pros Dev1ce and NAFFLY, and Call of Duty pros Tommey and Censor also sent out messages following the news, among many others.

YouTubers also paid tribute to the rapper, including No Jumper’s Adam22, who had featured JuiceWRLD on his podcast in Septemeber 2018.

Lil Yachty and Lil Nas X, two of Juice Wrld’s contemporaries, were stunned by the news. Lil Yachty featured on a remix of another of Higgin’s biggest hits, ‘All girls are the same’.

Juice Wrld was an avid fan of video games and had always been supportive of the culture, even donning a video game-style cover art for his ‘Death Race for Love’ album – his second, and now final album, of his career.

TMZ report that he was rushed to hospital, but was pronounced dead a short time later on the morning of December 8.