Less than a year after the release of his sophomore album, Come Home the Kids Miss You, Jack Harlow is back today (April 28) with his third LP, Jackman. He announced the drop earlier this week, and throughout the project, he names or alludes to other rappers in the business and their places in the music industry alongside him.
On the album’s second track, “They Don’t Love It,” Harlow references a famous line from Eminem‘s hit single “Lose Yourself.” In the process, he declared himself the best white rapper since Eminem and his rise to stardom at the turn of the millennium. “The hardest white boy since the one who rapped about vomit and sweaters,” he raps. “And hold the comments ’cause I promise you I’m honestly better than whoever came to your head right then.”
Even though Harlow is puffing his chest out, lyrically speaking, the Louisville-bred MC has a great respect for Eminem. “[He’s] catching a lot of slander from the new generation,” Harlow said in a 2021 interview with Pitchfork seen below. “I think they don’t have the context of what he was — truly an icon. When I was 9 through 13, that’s who I wanted to be.”
Harlow even got to hop on the remix of Em’s song “Killer” in 2021. The two artists never met face-to-face for the collab, but Em gave him his blessing before making the track. “We didn’t get to meet, but we had a phone call that meant the world to me,” he confessed in a 2021 interview with Billboard. “He gave me a lot of props that any artist would love to get. Sometimes, the best gem is just somebody you admire letting you know who you think you are. He let me know, ‘You’re that. You’re dope.’ I’ve waited a decade to hear that. So it was special.”