Jack Harlow is an enthralling, tall, and more and more chiseled 24-year-old man who sports activities a mop of curly hair, impossibly tamed and complemented by a youthful beard, sharp blue eyes, a coy smile, and a honking diamond earring in every lobe. Like all good heartthrob, he loves antics—he’s wanting to flirt with ladies he’s simply met and say, I love you, or just act like a goober in public. His second album, Come Residence the Children Miss You, reveals that the showmanship is merely a distraction from some insipid, vacuous music. Harlow’s charisma doesn’t translate onto the file, and, as an alternative, we’re left with a one-trick pony with no discernible trick, a reliable rapper who doesn’t stream intricately or write impressively, a pop star who struggles to hold a track on his personal.
Harlow’s origin story is repeated usually: At age 12, he determined he needed to be a rapper and set to work, practising, recording, and promoting CDs in school. By 19, he made “Darkish Knight,” the track that launched a major-label bidding conflict for his skills and, in the end, landed him a cope with the once-promising Atlantic imprint Technology Now. Nearly two years later, he made his first good track and true hit, “Whats Poppin”; then, after releasing his debut studio album, the Harlow hype machine went into hyperdrive with “Trade Child,” the Lil Nas X single the place Harlow dutifully carried out the position of the straight man within the proudly homosexual music video. Subsequent to Lil Nas X, Harlow delivered among the finest verses of his profession, too, his down-the-middle method an applicable complement to his co-star’s extra fluid supply.
Stripped of an applicable foil, nonetheless, Harlow’s swagger is muted. Regardless of an air of pomp, lead single “Nail Tech” is limp, largely because of its chintzy beat and Harlow’s reluctant vocals. He’s too informal on the track, as if he’s afraid to veer away from his tried and true stream for one thing extra expressive. Within the music video, for instance, he stands tall in a tank high holding three canines, like he’s DMX, and he raps, “You ain’t one among my canines, why do you hound us?” He winks, sneers, and mockingly snaps his hand as he mouths, “hound,” however any implied aggression or magnetism is misplaced on the recorded monitor.
Harlow’s means to rap effectively one way or the other acts as a hindrance to his means to make good songs. He doesn’t have a definable trait or tick that could possibly be parodied, preferring to maintain issues tidy and in addition make horrible allusions. (The worst is likely to be “Can’t lie, I’m on Angus Cloud 9” as a result of “You recognize I wish to dictate issues, Kim Jong” is so clearly silly that it should be a joke.) His easy method is much like these of fellow Southerners Megan Thee Stallion and DaBaby, the kind of bars-first-but-also-make-it-pop throwback rappers who perhaps wouldn’t have stood out within the business panorama of the 2000s, however are anomalies within the day and age of vibes. In contrast to them, nonetheless, Harlow doesn’t make shiny songs on Come Residence the Children Miss You. The album, for essentially the most half, consists of a monochromatic palette of generic “clean” beats, one simply bleeding into the following. Musically, it’s unfulfilling, missing standout melodies or thrilling rhythms. The sound of Come Residence the Children Miss You, in flip, is about as refined and fascinating as a Daniel Arsham sculpture, neat at a look however vapid upon any prolonged interrogation.
