Despite being five years old, Rock Band 4 is still very much a thing. The musician simulation video game is updated periodically with downloadable content (DLC) that add new songs to the playing experience. Earlier this week, the latest DLC brought players The Strokes’ “Bad Decisions” and Lizzo’s “Juice”. However, within 48 hours of becoming available, the latter track was pulled for making players sing the n-word.
For those who don’t know the game, players use special instrument-shaped controllers to jam along to popular tracks. There’s also a microphone with which one can sing the lyrics scrolling along the screen, attempting to match pitch to score points. The trick was when players reached the end of the second “Juice” verse, they had to sing, “The juice ain’t worth the squeeze if the juice don’t look like this/ Hold up, n*gga, please/ Don’t make me have to take your bitch.”
While “bitch” has become ubiquitous enough in music to become innocuous, some players were understandably shocked to see “n*gga” scroll across their gaming screen. In response, game developer Harmonix has pulled “Juice” from the DLC, promising to release an edited version “likely late next week.”
The decision to change the song has actually caused a counter controversy. Some fans are angered that Harmonix would censor the words of Lizzo’s art. However, the language in the Rock Band songs affects the game’s content rating, so using “clean” versions has been the company’s standard policy.
Some players have already uploaded videos of themselves playing the uncensored version of “Juice”, which you can watch below.
"Juice" is being pulled from the store and we will be releasing an updated version as soon as possible, likely late next week. Apologies for any inconvenience.
— Rock Band (@RockBand) April 23, 2020
