Some have speculated that the rapper Jack Harlow is an industry plant. He’s actually a hustler who has parlayed his goofy white-boy antics into a marketable persona, jiggyraps writes.
, with his loosely and monochromatically melodic raps, spells of winding introspection, soft misogyny, and bars that hinge at the joints. “Come Home,” in its submerged R. & B. samples, casual coquetry, and king-making pronouncements, is something of an homage, if not a caricature.
Many songs are co-produced by Boi-1da, a longtime Drake beat-maker, and the artist himself makes a guest appearance on “Churchill Downs,” a song that sees Harlow operating dutifully in his idol’s shadow. In close proximity, however, the younger rapper’s shortcomings become impossible to ignore: Drake’s verse is marked by specificity, clever turns of phrase, and matter-of-fact delivery, all of which are missing in Harlow’s own lyricism. Harlow’s music seems to be powered more by simulation of stardom than aptitude, and his craft is without a distinctive style. Wordplay often eludes him, and the hooks on “Come Home” are remarkably bland. Still, he proves himself capable of relaxed, breezy performance in verse. On “Young Harleezy,” Harlow flips through only a couple of rhyme schemes, each tumbling into the next; he skips along the hi-hats of “I’d Do Anything to Make You Smile” as if he’s playing double Dutch. These songs are heavily reliant on his flows—a necessary accommodation for someone whohe doesn’t “always have something to say in every moment.” At his best, Harlow has a sort of smirking chutzpah or searching self-consciousness . “There’s beauty in the details,” he rapped on the latter. Three years later, his music seems to be lacking in both details and beauty. The album, instead, rests heavily on nostalgic samples from the nineties and early two-thousands—Destiny’s Child, Fergie, Tweet, Snoop Dogg—that can bring welcome color and texture to the tracks. When it works—as on the key-driven opener “Talk of the Town,” which features a pitched-down sample of Destiny’s Child’s “No, No, No Part 2”—such moments feel like extensions of Harlow’s accessible personality. When it doesn’t , it seems like a cheap and useless gimmick. On songs such as “Side Piece” and “Lil Secret,” Harlow fashions himself as a jaded playboy, managing a roster of obsessed, unseen lovers. Even the songs that don’t sample the hits of yesteryear are clearly trying to evoke the smooth, silk-robe seductions of grown-and-sexy R. & B. But Harlow’s come-ons are often lurid and eye-roll-inducing—see “Like a Blade of Grass,” a track with the opening line “Like a blade of grass wants sunlight, I just want that ass.” Harlow doesn’t always hit his cues as a ladies’ man, but he does seem comfortable with his newfound celebrity. Haters, real or imagined, are the most potent inspiration here. “You know they prayin’ that I say the wrong thing / Look at the disdain that these hit songs bring,” he raps, on “Parent Trap.” On “Movie Star,” his elevated status brings awe and envy to those around him, and he responds with some of his slyest quips . Everything builds to the album closer, “State Fair,” a remembrance of the whirlwind past year in Harlow’s life. He takes stock of his accomplishments, his new self-image, his remaining ambitions. He fantasizes about going back to Kentucky, settling back into the rhythm of his old life, which he can only see through the lens of his new one. “I know I said I miss you,” he raps, unable to resist flexing on the people in his home town, “but I secretly don’t miss.”
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