Harlow’s appearance on Lil Nas X’s 2021 single “Industry Baby” plays out as a best-case scenario for a modern guest verse: not only did the chest-thumping pop-rap anthem become ubiquitous, give Harlow his first career Hot 100 chart-topper and eventually bring him to the Grammys stage, it also amplified his persona in a way that paved the way for his current enormity. …And then one of those collaborations exploded. As he was searching for a follow-up hit, Harlow refused to disappear for too long, and made his voice a regular presence within the mainstream of his genre.ĥ. His major-label debut, That’s What They All Say, became his first top 10 entry on the Billboard 200 chart upon its December 2020, and “Tyler Herro” and “Way Out” returned Harlow to the Hot 100, even though they couldn’t replicate the magic of “Whats Poppin.” He also continued making inroads with hip-hop’s elite class via collaborations, hopping on songs and remixes by Eminem, Ty Dolla $ign, Saweetie and French Montana in order to gain clout and keep popping up on streaming playlists.
He kept collaborating in between big singles…Ī little over a year elapsed between “Whats Poppin” and his next big hit, but Harlow kept himself busy in the meantime. 2 on the Hot 100, Harlow became an even more visible artist in mainstream hip-hop, with a couple of A-list co-signs now in his back pocket.Ĥ.
Not only did the guest stars fill out the song - its run time expanded from 2:19 to 3:47, and it sported a more traditional verse-chorus structure - but nary a phoned-in moment exists on the remix: DaBaby, Lanez and Wayne all bring their A-game over that piano loop, and helped legitimize Harlow by sounding so ferocious alongside him.Īrguably, the “Whats Poppin” remix hasn’t aged well - the song was released weeks before Lanez’s violent confrontation with Megan Thee Stallion, and a year before DaBaby’s controversial statements at Rolling Loud - but when the new version pushed to No. Six months after the release of “Whats Poppin,” Harlow gave his big single an all-star facelift by adding DaBaby, Tory Lanez and Lil Wayne onto an official remix for which he also recorded a new verse. JetsonMade and Pooh Beatz, fresh off the success of DaBaby’s “Suge,” unearthed an instantly memorable beat marked by the push-pull of an elegant piano loop and trunk-rattling percussion. “This is one of the only beats I ever just like, heard, and I was like, ‘I need it right now,’” Harlow said of “Whats Poppin” in a Genius breakdown of his breakout hit.
When Harlow did score a smash in 2020, part of its appeal was how natural his flow sounded - but that effortlessness took years to cultivate before arriving anywhere near where we know it today. His personality on the mic was compelling, if not entirely coherent he understood melody, but the hooks weren’t clean.
JACK HARLOW TAO CHICAGO FULL
Listening to Harlow’s early projects - which date back to the mid-2010s, a full half-decade before any sort of mainstream recognition - his gifts as a technical rapper that gravitates toward a brassy punchline are clear, but needed a few projects to gestate and evolve. Before Harlow was a household name, he was a teen from Louisville filming low-budget music videos in cars with his pals, rapping about both skipping high school classes and his go-to burrito order at Qdoba, and generally embracing a cool-nerd persona.
0 kommentar(er)
