Carmela Wallace, the mother of Juice WRLD, the Chicago sing-rapper who died five years ago as a rising star at age 21, still sometimes refers to her son in the present tense. Especially when it comes to his love of video games.
“He’s always loved video games,” Wallace said in a recent interview. “It was his way of having a moment to himself, where he could escape. Because he dealt with anxiety and depression and stress. You know, he left his mom’s house to become famous.”
“So that was his way of just having something normal,” she added. “He had a console wherever he went.”
One of his favorites was Fortnite, the immersive adventure-slash-fighting game, with millions of players at a time and, on special occasions, in-game concerts. Those can be big enough to make a real-world splash, like Travis Scott’s animated performance in April 2020, at the height of Covid-19 lockdowns, which drew nearly 28 million players across five showings.
Since then, there have been more shows by stars including Metallica, Ariana Grande, J Balvin and Eminem, whose appearance a year ago was such a draw that fans had difficulty logging in. Wallace, who oversees her son’s estate, approved his appearance in Fortnite’s latest musical event, the November-long “Chapter 2 Remix” — a nostalgic throwback to the game’s design circa 2020 — that also included Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Ice Spice, and culminated in a brief but elaborate virtual performance on Saturday afternoon.
That event, called “Remix: The Finale,” inside Fortnite’s Battle Royale mode, lasted less than 15 minutes, but by one measurement it surpassed the previous record held by Scott. “Remix: The Finale” drew more than 14 million concurrent players for its first showing, according to Epic Games, the company behind the title, compared with about 12 million for Scott’s debut.
Like all Fortnite concerts, the event started as gamers’ avatars — dressed as Snoop Dogg, Juice WRLD and random ninja assassins or anime characters — wandered through the game’s virtual landscape toward a designated performance zone. Then the sky turned purple, hand-held controllers began to vibrate rhythmically and a giant Snoop Dogg, looming over the landscape like a cosmic deity, performed an excerpt from his 2004 hit “Drop It Like It’s Hot.”
After that, Eminem battled like a “Transformers”-style robot warrior (itself a reference to an earlier Fortnite event). Ice Spice appeared as a back-streets princess before an animated Juice WRLD performed his 2018 hit “Lucid Dreams” and offered the premiere of “Empty Out Your Pockets,” a bonus track from his third and “final” posthumous album, “The Party Never Ends,” released Friday. If you had stepped away to chuck a snack in the microwave, you might have missed half the show.
For the music industry, hit games like Fortnite and Roblox are now coveted outlets for promotion, as well as key new revenue streams. Gamers tend to be some of the most intensive streamers of music, and while playing they can be enticed to spend money on an array of in-game goodies, like customized player “skins” (outfits) and “emotes,” character dance moves sometimes associated with visiting stars like Megan Thee Stallion. Fortnite has more than 500 million user accounts, and 110 million people play it each month, according to Epic Games.
Midia Research, which studies the business behind media and tech, said overall revenues from in-game spending are expected to grow from $126 billion in 2023 to $177 billion by 2030 — and artists and record companies are primed to capture as much of that as they can. The Interscope Capitol Labels Group, a division of the giant Universal Music Group that releases music by all four of Saturday’s stars, has had a gaming division for eight years.
“We’re trying to figure out how we can best reach fans with music,” said Steve Berman, a longtime music exec — frequently called out in Eminem lyrics — who is vice chairman of the Interscope Capitol group. “The more opportunities we have for music to be in games, we’re reaching new fans.”
Adam Sussman, the president of Epic Games, described its music partnerships as mutually beneficial.
“We think about Fortnite as an opportunity to drive the future of social entertainment,” Sussman said, defining it as “the intersection of gaming and lots of other entertainment categories like music and sport and fashion.” After the remix concert, Fortnite premiered the music video for “Empty Your Pockets.”
The planning for Saturday’s show began soon after Eminem’s performance last December, which David Nieman, the head of Interscope Capitol’s gaming division, said had driven “Super Bowl-type consumption numbers.” For these deals, record labels typically grant licenses for music rights, but artists or their estates usually control further rights, like those for their name, image and likeness that can be needed for skins or signature dance moves.
The “remix” month kicked off on Nov. 1 with a concert in Times Square by Snoop Dogg and Ice Spice, which was streamed live on Fortnite; the changing colors of billboards were reflected in the game to blur the boundaries of real and digital life. Over the course of November, carefully designed avatars of the artists were introduced within the game. Epic Games’s programmers worked with Ice Spice’s favored IRL jeweler to craft her bling, which included a heart-crowned tiara and oversize diamond pendant.
Players who found and defeated Eminem in a section of the map called Spaghetti Grotto could acquire a special weapon: the “rap god minigun,” a rolling machine gun that spits out rapid-fire Eminem lyrics along with bullets.
Wallace, Juice WRLD’s mother, said she had been involved for months in approving various details of his appearance.
“I thought it was a very authentic way to continue his legacy,” she said. “I was involved in really all the phases — the outfits that he’s wearing, the music. I would get sent clips and artwork to approve, everything.”
Skins of Juice WRLD, whose real name was Jarad Higgins, displayed the number 999, which the rapper put in his lyrics (and on tattoos) as a symbol of positivity, an inversion of 666. After his death, from an accidental overdose of codeine and oxycodone, his mother created Live Free 999, a foundation supporting programs that “compassionately and successfully address addiction, anxiety and depression.”
Wallace said she chose Fortnite over other virtual representations of her son that had been proposed to her.
“A couple of years back,” she said, “someone wanted to do a hologram, and I couldn’t support a hologram. Now that piece was a bit much for me. It was a little creepy.”
“But the video game,” Wallace added, “is cool.”
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