Monica Is Jack Harlow’s Identity Crisis. It’s Also His Best Album.

About eight years ago, Jack Harlow trolled the fuck out of me. Or, at least, it felt like he did. Visiting XXL’s midtown Manhattan office for a video freestyle, pre-glow-up Jack — glasses, unwieldy curly hair and all — sat down in our video room with his publicist for a listening session. The point was obviously for him to play me his music so I could get a sense of where he was headed artistically. So then, I was a little … bewildered when he began playing Frank Ocean instead. After I told him the deal, he politely switched to his own tunes and the visit resumed as it was supposed to. Since then, his career’s played out the same way. Harlow’s always been unsure what to present us. 

Starting roughly with 2020’s “What’s Poppin,” he pulled up as White Drake — a solid technician with understated wit and smooth, goofy goober cool that might make you okay with him banging your daughter. After 2022’s Come Home The Kids Miss You critically flopped, he returned a year later with the minimalistic Jackman, the proverbial back-to-basics album that established him as a rap woodsman with little concern for the outside world. Now, after scrapping an album he said he’d been recording for two years beforehand, he’s gone left again. Released Friday, Monica presents the 28-year-old as Jacky Soulchild, supposed purveyor of muted neo soul. If you can get past the hats and memes, you might accept his new album as acceptable elevator music you can fold your laundry to. If you’re more cynical, you’ll say it’s a cheap rebrand. Having interviewed Harlow, I say it’s well-intentioned. It also marks the latest chapter in a career-long identity crisis. Except this one might have brought him the best album of his career. 

Harlow’s latest shapeshift is simultaneously loud and restrained. On one hand, his sudden wardrobe change — most famously punctuated by a Kangol cap — has made him the center of an incalculable number of memes. But the music itself is gentle and atmospheric. Here, Robert Glasper, Lido, veteran pianist Cory Henry, and others pop out to supply lush keys designed to soundtrack a Panera Bread. Maybe an upscale one. The basslines are subdued but soulful, and, combined with Harlow’s sleepy vocals and tepid percussion, tracks like “My Winter” play out like a lullaby for vegan lattes and dying situationships: “You’re my winter, she’s my summer/ One comes 'round, I crave the other.” Speaking to The New York Times’ Popcast, Jacky Soulchild said he wanted to create an album you could listen to passively. Reclining in my living room, hungover and watching life pass me by, I can confirm he did just that. 

While critics will brand Monica as a D’Angelo impression, the inelasticity of Harlow’s voice renders it closer to lounge music. Think of a less charismatic Frank Sinatra mixed with a James Blake that left his falsetto at home. That earthiness gives Harlow the charm of a recovering frat boy next door — like a would-be boyfriend who can’t really sing, but will try anyway ’cause her effervescent spirit reached out to him from across Starbucks. Laced with supple guitar strings, a longing melody, and a tightly wound, repetitive chorus structure, “Lonesome” is as warm as it is subtly seductive; you can almost picture Harlow whispering fly guy platitudes into a baddie’s ear. Framed in a sun-soaked, semi-orchestral soundbed, “All Of My Friends” is a peek into the mind of a Drake that never became a fuckboy. 

As a Black journalist who’s also tired of the Post Malones of the world, I’ll say the backlash to Harlow’s ill-advised “got Blacker” comment is equal parts social theater and unconscious self-branding; if you’re the designated Accountability Guy™, context isn’t as important as re-upping your morality lease at a public signing. Even privately, the idea of letting Harlow’s comment go becomes a micro-existential crisis: “If I don’t immediately condemn this obvious joke, am I woke anymore?” You can practically hear the malfunction. On my end, I’m cool with white artists in Black spaces paying a kind of cultural taxes. But not the public execution every time they forget to apologize for being white. 

But setting all discourse aside, Monica is a very pleasant album — as long as you don’t compare it to D’Angelo. Ultimately, Harlow lacks the vocal power and Southern-fried, funkadelic eccentricity of the best neo soul crooners, and his songwriting lags behind in symbolism. He’s more likely to make a song called “Naomi’s Smile” than “Devil’s Pie.” 

That Monica lacks the kineticism of “What’s Poppin” or even “Tyler Herro” isn’t a flaw; it’s a design. Unlike his first LP (2020’s That’s What They All Say) or much worse second album (2022’s Come Home The Kids Miss You), there aren’t by-the-numbers attempts at hit singles. The new project feels less segmented than either of those, even if his granular wit doesn’t translate as seamlessly in alt-R&B. It’s got the same integrity as Jackman, but without the clumsy Joyner Lucasian concept songs. Buoyed by charm, world-building and surprising subtlety, it’s the most focused and most deliberate project he’s ever released.

While his literal range gives the album a lower ceiling than it should have, his vocal limits are a scenic fence for the steadiness he wanted in the first place. Vocals from Mustafa and Ravyn Lenae and rich instrumentation fill in the empty spaces Harlow’s vocal range cannot. It’s his second abrupt aesthetic identity shift and, admittedly if he does this shit again, he should call his follow-up The Talented Mr. Harlow. Speaking to Popcast about Monica, Harlow said he wanted to make an album without ego. He did that. Eight years into his career, he’s also without identity. But, funny enough, you can’t say he’s without soul.

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