Rapper Juice WRLD’s girlfriend, Ally Lotti, has spoken out for the first time since his death on December 8.
Juice, whose real name was Jared Higgins, died after suffering from a seizure at Midway Airport in Chicago at the age of 21.
A week later, Ally spoke about her late boyfriend on stage at the Rolling Loud festival at the Banc of California Stadium in Los Angeles.
She told the crowd how the rapper ‘loved every single person that he helped on this Earth’.
Ally said:
He literally loved every single one of you guys.
There is not a time when he had shown me any different love then he felt for you.
He wants everyone to know that you need to take any negative, any negative thing in your life, he would tell you every time he saw you and change that to a positive situation.
The crowd chanted her name as she left the stage.
While few details have been released regarding details of Jared’s death, Joyner Lucas has blamed his death on rappers ‘who glorified drugs and made it cool’.
Taking to Twitter, Lucas wrote:
Juice WRLD was 21. He was a product of our generation of rappers who glorified drugs and made it cool. I’m blaming yal n*ggaz for this shit. All that lean and pills n*ggaz glorify and talk about. You teaching the kids to do it. Smh you happy now? Rip @JuiceWorlddd. Gone too soon.
Fellow rapper Nicki Minaj also paid tribute to the musician when she accepted the Game Changer award at the Billboard Women in Music ceremony.
She recalled a time when she was touring with Juice and he comforted her backstage, despite being completely inexperienced by comparison.
‘He held my hand and told me to stay calm and pray,’ she recalled. ‘I was shocked that he told me that, but right there in that moment, I did feel calm and wondered, “Hm, what am I actually worried about?”’
The Starships rapper described the young talent as a ‘kindred spirit’ who cared deeply about those close to him and about the music he made, before going on to say she regretted not doing ‘something to help’.
‘I know this is a Women in Music night, and I’m honored to be in the presence of all these women,’ she continued. ‘But it doesn’t feel comfortable to talk about me when someone so important to our culture died.’
Rest in peace, Juice WRLD.
If you have experienced a bereavement and would like to speak with someone in confidence contact Cruse Bereavement Care via their national helpline on 0808 808 1677.
Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.