Last week I went to a show for Jack Harlow at the Brooklyn Paramount. It wasn’t very well marketed, and most people I know who love music weren’t even aware that he was in town. But from the moment I heard he was going to be in New York, part of me knew I needed to make it to the show.

For those of you who know me at all, you’ll know that I’m a massive hip hop fan. And not only a fan, but someone who spent years as both a journalist and working in the industry. Even though these days I’m not directly working in the music industry anymore, the one thing I’m always doing is looking out for the next hip hop acts that I can get excited about.

One of the artists I’ve been most excited about since I was introduced to him back in 2018 was Jack Harlow. It was clear to me even back then that he had all the talent in the world. So when his breakthrough hit record “What’s Poppin” came out in 2020, I was all over it. I remember playing it in a Clubhouse music room I used to host with a friend on Friday nights back during Covid lockdowns. And that’s what made finally going to his show at the Brooklyn Paramount that much more meaningful.

Every album he dropped after that was one I was super excited about, up until recently when he released a neo soul album called Monica. And it’s not that I don’t like neo soul, but more that I’d watched him build momentum over the years in a way that made it feel like he could make hits on demand. Sort of like… Drake, which is a comparison I’ve made many times when it comes to who I think has the ability to take the throne of hip hop now that artists like Drake are moving into their 40s. So this is a bit about the journey I’ve had as a Jack Harlow fan over the past few years.

His debut studio album That’s What They All Say in 2020 was filled with amazing records and great features in a way that felt like the start of an incredible career. Then when he dropped Come Home The Kids Miss You in 2022, it felt like his time to take that throne was imminent. Especially considering his track with Drake on “Churchill Downs,” which might honestly be my favorite Drake feature to date, and that’s saying something. It always felt to me like the reason Drake went so crazy on that record was because he needed to do what Jay-Z had done to him over the years: a seemingly hazing session where the established artist lets the up-and-coming talent know who the boss is. But in a playful way.

As a whole, 2022 was an amazing year for him. I remember missing a show he did at Barclays in October 2022 because I had work travel, so I was happy to finally make it to the show he did last night.

It felt like Jack Harlow was honestly on top of the world. Everywhere you looked, he was there. And then just like that, in 2023 he dropped a project called Jackman, where multiple songs gave off the impression that he wasn’t taking well to the fame he’d been working so hard for all those years.

There were songs about insecurity, burnout, the difficulties of adjusting to fame, how his relationships had changed, and so on. There weren’t any playful records that were meant to be hits like “Dua Lipa” and “First Class,” the ones we’d gotten so accustomed to hearing on his projects in recent years. And it felt intentional. Even the album cover was a picture of him shirtless in what seemed like a random alleyway, as opposed to the more clean-cut and well-groomed images he’d been using for everything else that had felt so PR coded.

Everything about the album came off as a rejection of expectations. You see, there had been a lot of conversation around the idea that he wasn’t a real rapper. Similar to the kind of nonsense that Drake has had to deal with for years, despite the fact that anyone with ears can tell you Drake is one of the best songwriters ever. It’s just that he also happens to know how to write hits. And the person who seemed most capable of taking the Drake crown was now facing that same sentiment online, with people saying he was just a pop artist. So he released this project full of immaculate rapping to show those people that he was exactly who he believed he was, and that he could turn that side of himself on whenever he wanted. And then, just like that, he sort of disappeared.

Instead of leaning into the newfound fame and everything he could do with it, he seemed to take a step back. He still released tracks here and there, all of which I enjoyed, but it felt like he was taking a backseat instead of deciding to go full throttle. And for the life of me, I simply couldn’t figure out why, to the point that it was almost upsetting at times. Because it felt like all of this amazing talent was being squandered.

I’d go back and listen to Jackman all the time, as I still do now, listening to tracks like “Ambitious,” “Is That Ight?,” “Denver,” “Blame On Me,” and “Questions,” wondering if maybe that level of fame just wasn’t something he could handle.

I’ve seen it from having worked in the music industry for years. While it’s not something you often hear about or even think about, there are a ton of people who have the talent needed to become the megastars we know. The Taylor Swift and Drake types aren’t nearly as far ahead in talent as they are in mental fortitude. You don’t hear those stories publicly, but behind closed doors you constantly hear about the people who just couldn’t handle it and broke along the way. But I refused to admit that could be happening to Jack Harlow, an artist I’d put so much stock into for so many years.

Fast forward to earlier this year when he announced he was dropping Monica. I was so excited until I started hearing what he was doing with it, which was not the rap album I’d been hoping for. Instead, it was this strange rendition of something that I had zero desire to listen to, and in the first music video he put out for it he was wearing this super funny hat that I just couldn’t make any sense of.

Then the album came out, and after giving it one listen, I was honestly upset. Maybe Jack really couldn’t handle the fame, and maybe this was how it was all going to end? The entire internet was seemingly mocking him, and friends of mine who knew I was a big Jack Harlow fan were messaging me asking what in the world had happened to the guy I’d spent years saying was the next wonder kid of hip hop.

I was honestly upset enough that when I heard he was going on tour, initially I had no desire to actually go to the show, even if I did quickly snap out of it. All I could think was that I was going to sit through a concert built around an album I’d listened to once and never even wanted to revisit. But then I started to ask myself if I was really being fair.

The biggest question I had to ask myself was this: who am I to project my definition of success onto an artist like that? That’s entirely unfair.

Then I started asking myself why an artist wouldn’t be allowed to experiment if they wanted to. After all, isn’t that exactly what Drake has done multiple times throughout his career, and something that has ultimately contributed to the massive success he has today? Just think back to recently when he dropped Honestly, Nevermind and all people wanted to do was criticize him for it. Who’s to say that this wasn’t Jack Harlow’s version of the same kind of album?

Isn’t what we’re supposed to do just appreciate an artist for who they are instead of who we want them to be? Isn’t it wrong to judge an artist based on the music we wish they would put out rather than the music they actually wanted to release? And bit by bit, the anger subsided and turned into empathy.

Even if Jack did take a backseat from becoming the artist I wanted him to be, nothing says he doesn’t still have everything needed to become that artist. And really, I imagine he doesn’t want to be known as the second Drake as much as he wants to be known as the first Jack Harlow. Just thinking about the kind of pressure it must create to spend your career in the shadow of someone like Drake, constantly being measured against him and people’s expectations of what you should become, sounds exhausting. And maybe that was simply never what he wanted.

Then I started to peel things back a bit further. Instead of being upset about that silly hat he was wearing in the music video for “Trade Places,” I started thinking that maybe this was actually the same thing Jack Harlow has always known how to do so well. He’s an internet-native Gen Z artist who really understood how to use the internet to his advantage when building the brand he did. And it started to make even more sense.

I’m happy to report that I’m really glad I went to the concert. It’s not to say he didn’t play a bunch of tracks off Monica, but he was on stage for almost 90 minutes performing songs from projects dating back to the late 2010s for his earliest fans instead of only catering to the newer ones.

The room was filled with people who were mostly much younger than me. As expected, there were way more women than men, but that’s not to say there weren’t plenty of young men there too. And every time a familiar hit came on, the crowd went crazy. Phones came out left and right to record their favorite songs. This wasn’t an artist who had fallen off. It was an artist with a dedicated fan base that most artists would kill for.

Was the Brooklyn Paramount significantly smaller, from a crowd perspective, than Barclays had been only a few years earlier? Sure. But he looked comfortable up on stage. Going acapella on a bunch of songs you could tell were his favorites. And if anything, you could see an artist who is still learning stage presence, cadence, breath control, and how to deliver certain parts of songs with the same tone they have on the studio recordings. So maybe the reality is Jack Harlow is exactly where he needs to be.

I'm glad the experience reminded me that someone else's artistry isn't about me, even if it can feel that way sometimes because these artists make songs that become so personal to us. It's a blessing that we get to find people who are able to create something out of nothing that resonates so deeply we end up standing in rooms singing lyrics that feel like our own stories, even though they came from someone else's life. I've always been annoyed watching people project their own expectations onto artists, and here I was doing exactly that without even realizing it. It was a good lesson to learn, and one I hope I carry with me. Here's to Jack getting to be exactly the artist he wants to be.

azeem’s Substack

Let Jack Harlow Be Jack Harlow