Jack Harlow seems like one of the more amicable rappers out there today. Well aware of his status as a white boy rapper, Harlow never really seems like he’s aping off someone else or hopping on a bandwagon. Instead, it seems like he just really loves hip hop and goes about it in a way that doesn’t feel like pandering or like he’s trying to be something he’s not.
As if to illustrate this, Harlow tweeted a snippet of a video back in March he made when he was just a suburban kid in Louisville, Kentucky. A goofy Kidz Bop-esque tune, Harlow showed off his still-in-development lyrical skills. “I’ve been getting busy working on my next track / So don’t get mad if you try to text Jack / and he doesn’t text back, I mean I’m sorry / I wish I could make it to your birthday party”. Bars.
That was fun enough, but the Tweet really took off when it got liked by two of the biggest rappers in the world; Kendrick Lamar and Drake.
Drake’s like and his subsequent analysis in the comments (“hardddddd”) was nice and all, but that guy is on social media all the time. The real surprise came from Lamar, who had been absent from social media on an extended hiatus at the time. Harlow’s tweet was the first like that Lamar gave out in nearly two years, making it quite the achievement from a kid who doesn’t look older than 11 in the video.
Harlow, obviously in good humour, took it all in stride. On Instagram, he shared the news of the acclaim with the line “so this is what it takes for the great ones to recognize my work?” You never know what’s going to be a hit, even if it’s a song about breaking hearts in middle school recorded when you were an actual middle schooler. Dreams really do come true.
Check out the tweet down below and try to argue against this being Harlow’s hardest line ever.