Juice WRLD has a brand — perennially heartbroken — and he’s doubling down on it. Dark and melodramatic, “Robbery” is a clunky metaphor about a woman demanding love from the Chicago rapper. “She told me put my heart in the bag/And nobody gets hurt,” Juice mournfully sings over a sparse and twinkling Nick Mira beat.
The first verse centers on the conflict between his father’s advice on romance, (“One thing my dad told me was ‘Never let your woman know when you’re insecure’”) competing against equally bad advice from his heart (“One thing my heart tells me is ‘Flex on a hoe every time they’re insecure’”). The song’s narrative further spins out of control from there. In the world of “Robbery,” Juice needs to keep a gun on him to deal with the hurt, throws rocks at a window and gets high to deal with the fact that the anonymous woman doesn’t pick up the phone fast enough. It’s a lot, maybe too much, but to the millions of kids streaming Juice, it’s probably just right.
A Deathrace for Love will be released on March 8th.