Jack Harlow

Harlow names Drake more than anyone when asked how he learned to rap. 'Drake came out when I started wanting to do it for myself, so Drake was a huge influence to me,' he told XXL in 2018, and he's kept saying it: in 2026, on the New York Times' hip-hop podcast Popcast, 'school of Drake, absolutely.' He remembers exactly when it clicked, too — hearing If You're Reading This It's Too Late and thinking, in his words, 'Drake's the best rapper alive. Right then. It was powerful.' That's the talk-sung, unhurried confidence Harlow chased for years before deciding, more recently, to write his way out from under it.

listen: upstream & heresource: DJBooth — Meet Jack Harlow interview (bio, Drake, Louisville roots) ↗share

2015

EnergyDrake

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2020

What's PoppinJack Harlow

listen forCue Drake's 'Energy,' from the 2015 album Harlow has singled out by name, next to 'What's Poppin.' Both ride a spare, hard beat that leaves room for the vocal to do the flexing — a coolly unbothered, half-spoken brag delivered like it cost the rapper no effort at all, each line landing a beat behind where you'd expect it, the confidence never once raising its voice.

'My earliest memory is my mom buying Late Registration and playing it in the car and telling me I can't say the n-word,' Harlow said in 2022 — his introduction to hip-hop and to Kanye West in one afternoon. What he took from that album as a writer was specific: the vulnerability of 'All Falls Down,' built on self-criticism instead of boasting. As Harlow put it in 2021, that song taught him the difference between rapping 'here's why I am the s—t' and 'here's why I am not the s—t.' A Guardian review later singled out his own 'Baxter Avenue,' about his white privilege, as that kind of song.

listen: upstream & heresource: Complex — Jack Harlow on the impact of the Kanye West cosign ↗share

2004

All Falls DownKanye West

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2020

Baxter AvenueJack Harlow

listen forPlay Kanye West's 'All Falls Down' against Harlow's 'Baxter Avenue.' Both trade the usual victory-lap subject matter for a rapper turning the critique on himself over a plain, unhurried beat — West sending up his own materialism, Harlow his own privilege — and listen for the confessional, almost conversational tone neither song lets slip into a punchline or a joke.

Eminem was playing in the car before Harlow could talk: his mother put on The Marshall Mathers LP when he was two, part of what he calls a childhood 'hip-hop education.' The comparisons followed him into his career — 'Eminem of course, just from the Caucasian connection,' he said of his own style in 2018 — and he still defends Eminem against younger fans who dismiss his beats as 'circus music.' 'That shit is still forever immortal,' he told Rolling Stone in 2022, insisting the technical density of Eminem's writing would outlast the joke.

listen: upstream & heresource: XXL — The Break Presents ↗share

2002

Lose YourselfEminem

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2017

Dark KnightJack Harlow

listen forPut Eminem's 2002 breakout single 'Lose Yourself' beside Harlow's own 2017 breakout, 'Dark Knight.' Neither wastes a single syllable: both ride a dark, minor-key beat with a flow wound tight around the pocket, internal rhymes stacking two and three to a bar, the rapper front-loading every line like the track might end before he's said everything he came to say.