[birds chirping]
[dial tone]
[phone dialing]
[phone ringing]
- [Room Service] Room service. How may I help you?
- [Jack] Uh yeah. Can I have a hot tea?
- [Room Service] Uh, which one?
- The hottest one. Just any of the-
- [Room Service] You want black, green tea?
- Green is fine.
- [Man On The Phone] All right.
- Thank you.
[relaxing music playing]
[door bell rings]
- Thank you.
[door shuts]
My security guard, we were talking about,
he's from out here.
We were talking about getting me out to see L.A. for real,
'cause I spent a lot of time just at the studio.
I look out the window and see how big it is,
I haven't experienced the bulk of it.
It's a work thing for me coming out here.
Atlanta molded me so much.
Seeing different artists processes,
the work ethic behind a lot of them out there.
There's a lot of go, go, go. Cook, cook, cook.
Let's record, record, record.
Atlanta taught me how to punch, for example.
How to freestyle in the booth
as opposed to sit down and write and be calculated.
Being in Atlanta taught me to go off the cuff, feel it out.
Out here it's a little, let's take our time.
Let's think about it. You know?
Let's be conceptual.
[slurps]
Still feel most at home in Kentucky.
You know, not everybody likes where they grew up
or associate it positively.
A lot of people are trying to escape where they're from.
Me,
I had a positive experience in Louis.
[soft piano playing]
The most southern thing about me...
May be my soul.
People out here, when we meet, there's a warmth
and there's a comfort we can share that they feel from me.
You know, it's just-
At least that's what they described to me
is it's a comfort.
[relaxing music playing]
I don't wanna attach myself to items that much.
Girls try to give me little stones to carry in my backpack
to protect me. Maybe they're helping.
2020, probably the year I'm going to look back on
as my life change. Why I had the privilege of growing
into my fame. It didn't happen overnight for me.
I mean, to me, it started in elementary school.
I was just always popular in my classes.
I was the it girl, man. I was the it girl.
I was able to adjust, ease into it.
The sense of awareness I had to have in my city.
It just extended to a national level of,
if I walk out this door,
someone might immediately recognize me
and want something from me.
It's one of the reasons I have reservations
about doing this with y'all.
I don't want you to know what my 24 hours are like.
I don't want you to see the inside of my room.
I don't want you to see, I want that for me.
I don't want you to know who I'm dating.
I don't want you to know this and that.
I want something for me because if you do enough,
they'll take it all from me. It's all for them,
if you give them enough. So that's one thing I've learned is
cut off some access.
But with that being said, I'm excited to be here.
You've been, you've been here the whole time.
Yeah, this is Urban,
Urban Wyatt, this is my best friend and photographer.
Shot every project cover I put out.
Grew up in the same neighborhood,
started working at Chick-fil-A together in Atlanta.
So I was making, what are the shits called?
Spicy Mc, spicy...
- Deluxes.
- Spicy deluxes in the kitchen in Chick-fil-A,
buttering the biscuits in an assembly line.
And then at night chasing my dreams.
We just wanted this bad and for some reason
there was no point on his journey where it felt like
there was a moment of, we might not get it.
I can't explain why, it always felt like a sure thing.
No matter how far away it was,
it just felt like a sure thing.
You know, people want to talk about God and Jesus.
That's fine.
Manifestation.
That's when I'm really sold. That shit's real.
- [MC] Can I have your attention please? Funny story right.
About two years ago, we was on this same stage,
but it was kinda dead. Hardly a crowd, but you know what?
I had a feeling things were gonna change.
Are you ready?
For Jack Harlow.
- Make some noise. Let me hear you.
[clapping]
Well, mentally I've been preparing for this tour
for a year and a half, but now it's coming closer
and it's time. To be a touring artist is like,
it's the biggest privilege.
You get to see the world, you getting paid to see the world.
You get to do it with your friends.
You get to perform the music you made,
and there's a room with people that want to sing along
to it with you.
It's paradise. It's a dream job.
[trap beat playing]
My anxiety for shows was always rooted in
is the room gonna be packed? You know,
I have like a fear of doing empty shows cause I did so many.
I know what that feels like.
So now that I have a tour that's sold out before
I take off on it, it's all I ever wanted.
You know the last tour we went on,
I was at a level where some of the venues were simply bars.
And so it's just about plugging the DJ system in,
getting the mic, getting in and get out.
I'm the bigger star now and we wanna match that.
We wanna become known for our live show.
Damn right, you wanna be in this scene
She at the video tryna be in this scene
Used to fantasize 'bout bein' this seen
Bluegrass girl but she got big dreams
Can't touch me, I got instincts
Locked in the house, but I'm plottin' things
I brought a gang to the party with me
Five white boys but they not NSYNC
Fuck what y'all think
Fuck everything that you say about me
My dawgs like to play Madden and 2K
But one thing they don't do is play about me
My homeboy Tyler, he play in South Beach
He told me this summer he fix my jumper
I told Boi-1da that we might got a thumper
I been tryna pop, now I'm on like Shumpert
If you don't already know, my name is Jack Harlow.
[hip-hop beat playing]
I spent a lot of the beginning of my career
in this really calculated space,
really thoughtful about what I was doing.
And as I grew older,
I developed this kinda taste for being off the cuff,
freestyling more, having fun with it,
putting less thought into it.
And now I'm in a space where I can blend being calculated
and kind of just dancing with it.
The production has to be of a certain standard.
I'm trying not to pick beats that sound like other beats
One of one is our mission right now, one of one.
Kanye West College Dropout, Late Registration, Graduation.
That window for me, the song making he was doing,
how every beat had an identity, how every song had a story.
That's where I draw a lot of my inspiration from.
There is something exciting about injecting your taste
into your music, you know,
as opposed to just picking what the world likes.
Like, let me give you a little bit of who I am
and that's how you get something one of one
and that's how you leave something behind
that can inspire someone else. You know,
I'm really curating the process times this time around.
I'm more hands-on than ever. You know,
I think in a way I could say I'm producing a little bit.
I'm not putting my hands on the keys,
but you know I'm first instinct when something's attractive
to the ear. So I jump as soon as I hear something I like.
Well, one thing I think I'd inherited from my father
is he doesn't like anything erratic. He'll play Sade,
he'll play Al green, he'll play a lot
of smooth country music. And then my mom,
she just put me onto rap and she liked a lot of rappers
that have bravado and personality.
She played Eminem growing up, she played Kanye West
growing up, she played Outkast.
So that gave me the interest in being, you know,
a technician on the mic.
Using my words, to express myself,
saying something that makes people feel confident inside.
There's so much self doubt involved in this process,
there's so many days a week where you have
to look in the mirror and question, am I really that?
Coming in contact with the idols I grew up
loving and listening to, and they're telling me I have it.
And hearing that and getting that validation charges you up.
Sometimes all it takes is someone to tell you,
you are who you think you are.
Hungry, hungrier than I've ever been.
I feel good about that.