Juice Wrld Goes Paintballing With Friends: Watch
Paintballing is Juice Wrld's happy place. While the armed activity is one of his favorite pastimes, the 20-year-old Chicago rapper hasn't had the opportunity to hit the field since he was a sophomore in high school. "I was going every week at one point," Juice tells XXL. That all changed in early August, when the "Robbery" artist welcomed XXL to join his paintball excursion with friends at Hollywood Sports Paintball & Airsoft Park.
Suited up in a purple camouflage hoodie decorated with smiley faces and iris blue swishy pants, Juice was "strapped up like I’m goin’ to basic training"—lyrics from a new freestyle he spit for XXL that day. Despite the 80-degree heat, Juice and his crew, including his cousin Sean, longtime friends Chris, Ty and Joe—all from Chi-Town—rapper The Kid Laroi, photographer Chris Long, engineer Ben Lidsky, Kelvin “Brother Nature” Peña and FaZe Adapt, a.k.a. Alex, a FaZe Clan YouTube gamer, hit the Forbidden City, Mad Max, Apocalypse and Lunar Wars paintball fields on a mission to win.
Juice Wrld and the squad split up into two teams and tackle the Attack the Tower game first. The platinum-selling rhymer shoots with reckless abandon, trying to take out the opps. The result? A victory for Juice and his team since he avoids getting hit this round and FaZe Adapt captures the flag.
For roughly three hours, the Death Race for Love creator and his entourage go to battle. Juice and Chris, his boy from Chicago, even put their acting skills to the test as they pretend they’re literally at war while resting for a few minutes in the shade to drink some much-needed water. The blazing hot sun calls for a break, which also means Juice has been spotted by a handful of kids at the park who recognize him. After taking photos and signing autographs on cell phone cases and hoodies, he's able to relax for a few. “I only got shot like once, so I guess I ain’t really lose,” he asserts. "And I got like five or six kills." Not bad for taking four years off from the game.
Moments like hitting up the paintball park are rare occasions for Juice, whose life as a chart-topping, singing and rapping rock star is hectic with touring, studio sessions and the daily grind as an artist. On the paintball field, Juice can escape. "I just like the fast pace thing of it," he says of his fondness for paintball. "It's a good workout. It's just fun."
Watch Juice Wrld go paintballing with his friends as XXL captures the action in the video below. And read his full-length interview with XXL for the Fall 2019 cover of the magazine, in which he discusses his upcoming third studio album, quitting lean and his mission to change the world.