“Lucid Dreams,” the song that made Juice WRLD a star and remains his highest-charting hit, has become the latest music video to reach one billion views on YouTube. It’s the late rapper’s first track to reach the milestone.
“Lucid Dreams” marked the arrival of Juice WRLD, born Jared Higgins, as a mainstream commercial force. Producer Nick Mira sampled Sting’s “Shape Of My Heart,” laying the melodic foundation for Juice’s lament about a painful breakup. Though it took Juice WRLD only about 15 minutes to write, the emo rap track’s infectious hook and emotionally charged lyrics resonated with a large audience on SoundCloud, where it debuted in 2017 as part of the 9 9 9 EP. There, it accumulated more than 2 million plays and helped Juice WRLD secure a record deal with Interscope while still a teenager.
Upon signing his deal, Juice WRLD officially released “Lucid Dreams” as a single on May 4, 2018. The music video, which followed six days later, featured close-ups of the Chicago artist’s head trapped in a floor, his face altered by colorful psychedelic effects. It was directed by Cole Bennett of Lyrical Lemonade, whose work with artists from the SoundCloud rap underground helped to define the visual language of the scene. The clip helped the song’s popularity to continue exploding, and it further established Bennett as a rising director in the music industry.
By October of 2018, “Lucid Dreams” had climbed all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song ended up at No. 12 on Billboard’s year-end Hot 100 chart for 2018. It remains Juice WRLD’s biggest song to date, though many more hits followed in its wake. “I feel like it’s just relatable,” Juice WRLD told Vulture of the song’s success. “I’m saying the things about feelings that people don’t know how to put into words.”
Watch Juice WRLD’s “Lucid Dreams” on YouTube now.