Juice WRLD’s second posthumous album Fighting Demons was released on Friday, but the project’s missing a key component.
In an interview with Complex, Juice WRLD’s mentor Lil Bibby and the late rapper’s manager Peter Jideonwo revealed they were unable to clear a Lil Wayne sample for the LP.
“It’s always tough clearing everything,” Lil Bibby said. “I had got this footage from this Lil Wayne interview, and it was really meaningful, really powerful. It was Lil Wayne talking about how he had mental health, and he shot himself. The cops saved him. So, I felt like that was really meaningful. And up until yesterday, we were even trying to clear it, and we couldn’t clear it.”
But Lil Wayne wasn’t the reason the sample didn’t appear on the Juice WRLD album. According to Jideonwo, the studio behind the interview was responsible for the clearance issues.
“We got denied—not by Wayne, not the interviewer, but the actual studio that owns the content,” Jideonwo explained. “And something like that puts a hole in the album.”
Although Lil Wayne’s missing from Fighting Demons, the latest Juice WRLD album still features plenty of star power. Justin Bieber, Polo G, Trippie Redd and BTS member Suga appear on the project. Eminem also speaks on one of the LP’s interludes.
Stream Juice WRLD’s Fighting Demons below.