“Jackman.” Album Review
Louisville’s rap megastar returned with a purpose for his surprise, junior LP.
“Everybody know Jack, but they don’t know Jack, man” was the subtle double-entendre from hip-hop’s hottest rising star, Jack Harlow, on “Churchill Downs” from his critically maligned sophomore album, Come Home the Kids Miss You (2022).
From the outside looking in, Harlow is the next big thing. He’s signed to one of Hip-Hop’s modern forefathers, DJ Drama. He’s set to make his big screen debut this month a reboot of White Men Can’t Jump. He’s been championed by his heroes, having his skills recognized by Kanye West (who Instagrammed in Kanye West fashion “This ni**a can raaaaaaap bro And I’m saying ni**a as a compliment Top 5 out now”) and has been wholeheartedly embraced by Drake (his biggest influence and self-professed G.O.A.T.). He’s the charming, handsome devil that’s as quick to crack a wry smile, as he is to flirt with Saweetie or Emma Chamberlain on the red carpet — that’s the idea of Jack Harlow in the popular consciousness.
However, in reality, “they don’t know Jack.” They really don’t know anything about Harlow’s life, but also “they don’t know Jack, man” plays on Harlow’s full name, Jackman Thomas Harlow, to express that they don’t know him personally either.
The 5-minute lyrical exercise joins a lineage of starry-eyed pupils cleverly boasting before being taken to town by their idols (see Drake and Jay-Z on “The Light Up,”) and on “Churchill Downs,” Harlow’s verse is the appetizer before Drake delivers arguably the best verse of 2022. Bouncing from abandonment issues to BDSM-onomatopoeia, Drake cascades over the Boi-1da assisted production before finishing with “And shorty like, ‘You know that boy Jack is goin’ places’ / I know.”
If Jackman. is a premonition of Drake’s clairvoyance, then the Louisville-emcee will be a fixture of Hip-Hop discourse for many years to come.
At just 24-minutes, Jackman. is a reflexive look at Harlow in an almost autobiographical fashion. Sprawling with lush, soulful production from a meticulously curated collection of some of the genre’s finest — including Hollywood Cole, Boi-1da and the DJ Dahi — the project harkens back to the sounds of the early oughts that Harlow grew up to. It’s his most honest offering yet. No earworm samples, no features or overly pronounced hooks, just Jackman talking about Jackman.
Peeling back that veneer of braggadocio, Harlow tackles more substantive topics left unexplored on previous albums with a sobering level of vulnerability. From privilege and identity, desires and ambition, lifestyles and relationships, and everything in between — Harlow’s junior offering, and its surprise announcement, is like a middle finger to the critics who panned Come Home the Kids Miss You — it’s an indignant display of his masterful ability and artistry.
Harlow is no stranger to honesty in his music (he once wrapped about premature ejaculation on his 2016 track “Magazine”), but vulnerability has been area of contention. Lamenting on the closing track of 2019’s Confetti, “In my old shit, I used to just admit things / Now I sit around and wonder, ‘Is that something you admit?’”
Here; however, Harlow’s vulnerability is remarkable. Perhaps showcased nowhere else more prominently than on “Gang Gang Gang.” With the haunting refrain looped and exquisite rhyming (He rhymed “Marcus” with “Pokémon cards with”!), the 3-minute track is an authentic examination on just how far friendship and loyalty go. Reflecting on returning home and hearing the horror stories of his two childhood friends’ heinous misdeeds, and defaulting to denial and disbelief, before delivering some harsh truths.
Some have remarked he could’ve zeroed in on just one friend, and hyper-narrativized his reaction to this revelation (à la “Stan”), but that’s not realistic. In a culture marked by dogged loyalty, no one wants to belief their closest friends are monsters. Yet, he confronts this uncomfortable reality in the song’s final verse, a candid soliloquy, recanting “Truthfully, it’s family ’til it can’t be, gang ’til it ain’t / Twins, but it depends, brothers until somethin’ is uncovered / Dawgs until the lifting of the fog / ‘I always got you,’ turns into ‘Well, I never thought you.’” It an audacious premise to tackle, and the attempt alone is worth some recognition.
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Elsewhere, rest assured, the 10-track LP is still bubbling with Harlow’s trademark confidence. He lets everyone know his unparalleled desires to be great, and his Eminem-sized ambitions to be “The hardest white boy since the one who rapped about vomit and sweaters” on the blisteringly boisterous “They Don’t Love It.”
The specter of being a “white boy” looms over Harlow’s career, like that of G-Eazy, Macklemore and so many others. Being a white artist in such a predominantly black genre like Hip-Hop comes with a heightened skepticism about whether the art and accomplishments are based in merit and appreciation of the artform (i.e., Eminem or Mac Miller), or if this is just another clumsy cultural interloper that wants exploit black culture and try on blackness so long as its profitable (e.g., Post Malone, Miley Cyrus for that weird period in the early 2010s, and somewhat also Kim Kardashian’s hokey-pokey with blackness and Hip-Hop culture).
Harlow’s been keenly aware of this dichotomy throughout his career, lamenting on “Baxter Avenue” from his debut-album That’s What They All Say (2020), “Always wondered to myself if I could really be the leader / Of a group of brown-skinned boys when I’m not brown-skinned / Certain things they grew up on that they get but I don’t get / Differences in how we raised make me feel like I don’t fit / Not to mention the distance between our parents’ houses.” He’s always been cognizant that he’s an outsider in lived experience, but has grappled with the fact he feels he’s talented and has a true love and appreciation for Hip-Hop.
Enter stage-left, perhaps the most contentious track on Jackman., “It Can’t Be.” An indignant response to those believed the success he’s accrued is due simply to being white. Opening the chorus with “It must be my skin, I can’t think of any other reason I win,” before using anaphora to retort in the verse with a plethora of others factors that contribute his success. Like citing his skill “It can’t be my pen, it can’t be these verses / That make people feel like I’m talkin’ to them” or his influences he grew up on “It can’t be the Tribe and the Biggie and the Nas / The Outkast and the Missy in my iPod.”
It’s clever, and maybe a tad reductive. Race undoubtedly plays a factor; he’s been aware of that. However, having all his success attributed to everything but his ability is surely irksome, and the track is crafted to air that frustration.
Whiteness doesn’t go uninterrogated though. He opens Jackman. with “The suburbs are filled with ebonics and trap sonics / Frat boys sayin’, ‘No cap, put racks on it’ / The dialect got a lil’ splash of some black on it” on the intro track “Common Ground.”
A pointed critique and observation of the consumption of a black art from by largely white audiences, “Common Ground” explores Hip-Hop as an intersection of privileged, white suburbia and black communities these songs come from. With lines like “Recitin’ rap lyrics ‘bout murder and cash profit / Get to feel like a thug but don’t have to act on it” remarking on how white fans fetishize the realities of black artists, glorifying violent realities, without ever having experience them.
On the whole, Jackman. has all the hallmarks of Harlow’s strongest abilities, and showed growth that indicates he’s dedicated to his craft and is going to continue to flourish as an artist. There’s his subtle wordplay is on display on “Ambitious,” a 10-year odyssey where Harlow raps about his life at 14, 19 and 24-years old, where he remarks about his following at 14, “Even if it’s fifteen high school chicks / Better than a front row of dicks.” The storytelling chops that took over airwaves with the Chris Brown-assisted “Already Best Friends” in 2020, take on a new a heft here for the penultimate “Blame On Me.” A thoughtful, heart-wrenching tale of the brotherhood, parenting and the relationship strain between Harlow, his younger brother and his father, that he tells from each of their perspectives. And while Jackman. really sees Harlow coming into his own voice, there’s still some residue of Drake’s influence (in the best way possible) and the 6 God’s propensity to close an out with a stream-of-consciousness verse set to a woozy, underwater soul sample — on Harlow’s rhetorical exercise about love, relationships, material objects and success, on the closing track, “Questions.”
Jack Harlow is here to stay. The no-rollout, shock drop that was utilized for Jackman. indicates not only a confidence in what he created, but also a care about the craft of the music, over its reception. And if this is any indication as to what’s to come for Harlow, he may be well on his way to filling the Eminem-sized shoes he’s got his eyes set on.
This piece was originally written in May 2023 as a final essay for my Hip-Hop Culture and Contemporary America class (shoutout Dr. Thibodeaux). I liked what I wrote, and tweaked it just a smidge for Medium. Thank you for reading.
