Jack Harlow is all about performing at his best.
Harlow recently quit drinking. While he says that he does not have an alcohol problem, drinking on tour — in one instance six nights in a row — was having a noticeable impact on his professional and personal life.
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“I’m sick of waking up with a dry throat, sick of feeling bloated, I’m sick of the decisions I make on it,” he tells Rolling Stone. “I’m in my well-oiled-machine era. Because I can see my future right in front of me. And I feel there’s so many people counting on me outside of myself. I just feel like I’m a man. I don’t feel like I need to do boyish things anymore.”
Moving from personal decisions to business decisions, Harlow reveals that he is very particular about collaborating on pop songs. Harlow worked with Lil Nas X on “Industry Baby”. Harlow is a fan of Lil Nas, but even that process was complicated.
“You won’t believe what I’ve turned down, because this pocket we’ve got right now is fragile, man. I’ve turned down so much shit that would have been a big ol’ bag,” Harlow says before revealing that Nas’ handlers wanted to cut Harlow’s verse in half “for the algorithm.”
“I don’t want to be the eight-bar novelty hip-hop feature on this,” Harlow recalls telling Lil Nas directly. “F**k the algorithm.”
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Harlow has lofty ambitions to be the greatest rapper of his generation and he looks up to “Killer (Remix)” collaborator Eminem for inspiration.
“That’s what made Eminem so hard — he was in the dog pile,” says Harlow. “I want to be the face of my shit, like the face of my generation, for these next 10 years. We need more people in my generation that are trying to be the best, and you can’t do that with just ear candy, vibe records. You got to come out swinging sometimes.”
