Juice WRLD’s Video For Psychedelic Emo Rap Classic ‘Lucid Dreams’ Crosses 1 Billion Views on YouTube

If there is a single image that pops to mind in many fan’s brains when they think of late MC Juice WRLD it’s likely of the rapper’s laconic face sticking up from a hole in the floor in the video for his breakthrough 2018 hit “Lucid Dreams.” That might explain why it’s the first one of Juice’s videos to pass the one billion mark on YouTube.

The video service announced the news on Wednesday (August 7), welcoming the rapper born Jarad Anthony Higgins into the club; Juice WRLD died on Dec. 8, 2019 at age 21 of accidental oxycodone and codeine intoxication.

The trippy clip directed by Lyrical Lemonade founder Cole Bennett is as hazy as the interpolation that undergirds the melody, Sting’s 1993 ballad “Shape of My Heart.” It finds Juice trapped in a hole in the floor as he sedately sing/raps, “I still see your shadows in my room/ Can’t take back the love that I gave you/ It’s to the point where I love and I hate you/ And I cannot change you, so I must replace you/ Easier said than done/ I thought you were the one.”

The hazy visual then finds Juice smoking and singing the song while sitting on steps as a digital skull floats across the screen and the word “dead” flashes in red and a fiery door opens and closes amid images of the MC and a woman in corpse-like makeup. The story, such as it is, never advances beyond the backlit lip synch performance, flashes to the floor-trapped Juice and a final image of his hand joining with what looks like a woman’s hand superimposed with a pulsing heart.

“Lucid Dreams” was originally released on SoundCloud before its inclusion the rapper’s debut full length Goodbye & Good Riddance album; it debuted at No. 74 on the Billboard Hot 100 before peaking at No. 2 and to date has nearly 2.6 million streams on Spotify, putting it at No. 24 on the list of most-streamed songs of all-time on the service.

Watch the “Lucid Dreams” video below.