Where have all the white rappers gone?

WMBA's new CBA, three-time champion and WMBPA Vice President Alicia Clark, aka AC, and

the SPM basketball analyst Andrea Carter. We're also going to take a look at our NCAA brackets and check out what's next in March Madness. Check out the latest episode of Touch More, wherever you're podcasts, and on YouTube. Welcome to Switched On Pop. I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. And I'm producer Rianna Cruz.

“What have you brought me today? All right Charlie, you remember Jack Harlow, right? He's the”

Kentucky rapper behind such hits as first class. Yeah.

It was the Fergi interpolation that I never needed. Sorry. More recently, he had the track

11 on me. I like that one more. It's got the sample of a Cadillac Dales. Whatever, basically. Yeah, both of those were commercially successful singles. And Jack Harlow has been a pretty notable figure in the world of pop rap over the past few years. And today, I bring him up because he is back with a new record. It's called Monica came out this past week. And it is striking up conversation because of the way that it sounds. Here's the song "Trade Places."

I haven't listened to this yet. And so, initial reaction. Very 90s Neo-Soul, nodding to

DiAngelo, much more R&B, less hip-hop. Yeah, this is the first track on the album. It's the first song you

hear. And in a complete pivot, Monica is not a rap record at all. As you could hear, it's actually a Neo-Soul and R&B inspired record. And the 180 came as a surprise to me because I know Harlow to be strictly a rapper, specifically one that falls in a long lineage of white mainstream rappers, you know, from someone like Mack Miller going all the way back to the Beastie Boys in the 80s. And instead of keeping with the vibes of rap as he's done in the past, he's kind of double down on

this pivot, falling into sounds and textures that in his words, I'm quoting him here, have made him get blacker. That was on the New York Times pop cast. Well, he said it aloud.

“Yeah, I think, you know, this is an extremely out-of-pocket thing to say. And even more than that,”

it is connected to the larger culture of white artists, badly co-opting black music. I mean, as we establish with his former hits, like he seems to be someone who has built his Sonic identity on other people's art and primarily black art. So, needless to say, people have not been reacting kindly to Jack or his record, Monica. And, you know, his response there did give me thinking about Harlow in the context of race, but specifically in regards to the

Pantheon of his fellow white rappers. And doing a survey of the field, you know, looking at the landscape of rap in 2026, there is a question that I've been mulling over the past few years. And that's where have all the white rappers gone? As rap has receded in its commercial success, it seems like the white rappers have moved towards genres that are more commercially popping off like country, emo, rock, other places. Most of not all of the other big ticket white rappers from

specifically the past 10 to 15 years have fully jumped ship from rap. I mean, you mentioned

“country, I think of Post Malone's full-send into country music and twang, you know, he put out the”

record F1 trillion, which is all country songs. Even as a song with Hank Williams Jr. called "Finder Things." Some twang with semi-autal white rappers consistently as evidenced through

pivot's prior to Jack is that they are also often commercially lucrative. Post Malone's pivot

has been received well, he's headlining stage coach. Jack Harlow's image shift is not set up in the same way. I saw something that this album is projected to debut outside of the top 20 on Billboard. And so there's two things I want to look at. Overall, what is happening on this album Monica and how does it compare to his white rapper Pears who have also made pivots outside of rap? Oh boy, but here we go. What is happening on Monica? Obviously, Jack's general disposition

towards race is kind of a huge factor in the way this record is being received. People that

would have listened to it are now off put by his now highly publicized comments that he got

blacker. And I think for his existing fan base, the pivot is not connecting with what they know

“Jack Harlow to be. And so I think for the sake of understanding, it's important to identify”

what the Jack Harlow formula previously was. There's a lot of aspects to his career that are predicated on personality. He's been able to market himself well. And I think he's delivered commercially successful hits and I've gotten massive streaming and radio play. One song of his that I feel like has all of the reasons why he's successful is a track from his debut studio record called Tyler Harrow. Hey, it's me. I got his things locked in the house, but I'm playing things.

I'm gonna gang to the party with me. Five white boys, but they're not in sync. What would y'all think? Fuck everything that you say about me. My dogs like a playman and it's okay, but one thing down to us play about me. My home boy Tyler who plants out beans. He's on me this song. Kind of slower, trapping, spire track. The flute sounds remind me of like futures mask off. He's also I'm realizing playing in the Post Malone tradition. That's not the right word. He's

using the same playbook. It's what I'm looking for. Playbook specifically because Tyler Harrow is a

basketball player. One of Post Malone's first records White Iverson. Also a nod to a basketball

“player. What are you hearing? What's the Jack Harlow thing for you in this song? Well, I think”

he has a casual flow. It doesn't really feel labored the way that he's delivering the lyrics. I agree that the beat reminds me of mask off by future. I think Jack tends to have an ear for beats that are interesting. I think there's personality in his lyrics and the way that he delivers things. He's friends with Tyler Harrow, but he also mentions that his friends like to play his dogs, as he says.

Like to play Madden and 2K, he brings up him on Shumperd, who's another basketball player. His interests are on his sleeve and I do think that goes back to his personality element where people connect with him as a person. Yeah, I mean, you say that it's very personality-driven. You're saying, "Hey, I'm just a guy. I like to play video games with my friends." I mean, frankly, I think Jack kind of looks like the kind of guy who, like, bought a gun at middle school with him.

He's got a sort of shaggy, uncapped hair, but I feel like Jack Harlow came up at the exact same

“time when the slang word "Riz" came about and I think that that's what he has in space.”

And I think that's what he's giving over and over. He has charisma that is captivating. I also think that a fundamental element of this song that kind of extends to the larger Jack Harlow catalog, he kind of centers his whiteness in a very tongue-in-cheek way. His race in his upbringing is a core element of his persona. He even throws us lines in Tyler Harrow that are like corny, self-aware white guy jokes. Like when he says, brought a gang to the party with me,

five white boys, but they're not in sync. What does that even mean? What's wrong with in sync? Like, I would love you friends with in sync. What would not be so lucky if that was my crew? Well, it's a double-on-tanger. Like the guys are not synced up. I don't know. Yeah, they're messy. These are not, yeah. These are average dudes. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, he's self-aware. He tends to be a little self-deprecating. I think

a kind of affability that feels sincere. He's also not afraid to be silly and I think that's

really important for a rapper, particularly a white rapper. But even in this track, the opening line is kind of racially strange. The ones that hate me the most, look just like me. You tell me what

“that means. I think he's saying I have a lot of black friends, which is really awkward. No. It's”

strange kind of posturing. It's like the ones that have the biggest problem with Jack Harlow. He is implying or white guys and he's like, I'm cool with black people. If you're looking for a high five

and, you know, in an okay, you don't give it to yourself. Yeah, and it kind of functions maybe as

like a crystal ball into the racial politics that end up being his downfall in the future. Like maybe there's a line to trace between the ones that hate me the most, look just like me. And with this new record, I quote unquote, "got blacker." Okay. So where do we go from here? So Tyler Harrow is off of his debut album and generally, Jack Harlow's larger body of work has failed to excite critically. I once wrote a piece that described his sophomore record come home the kids miss you as,

quote, "devoid of any discernible character, mediocre wraps, and instrumentals that could have been found by searching Drake type beats on YouTube." So... You're not holding any punches. Yeah, well, the thing is that like, I feel like I understand the Jack Harlow character and when he doesn't play to the things that make him worth my time, it doesn't land. He has trouble playing to his strengths, perhaps that he's pursuing this kind of self-serious image. You know, so he's already

batting low, puts out another record called Jackman in 2023. That's his actual name, Jack is short for Jackman. And he's dropped a few singles since then, including the track, just us, featuring Doja Cat. He feels like he's someone who's putting on a lot of masks. Interesting. You think he's like caused playing as Riz God. Yeah. Totally. Clearly in 2026, you know, Harlow finds himself in a weird musical space trying to figure out what works. A lot of his stuff isn't

really landing, which leads us back to Monica. Yeah. I mean, radical transformation, right. We've left behind all of the electronic sequence drums. We have a very swan, slow beat. The bass is live and feels very akin to the

sort of like Pinopaladino playing off of D'Angelo's record. When I think of D'Angelo, I go first

to Voodoo. It has that loose timing that, you know, Quest low was bringing to that record. I feel

“like that's that's what he's so clearly copying from and having lost the Angelos recently.”

That's a really bold kind of sound to move towards. Yeah. And I also think that in that Jack song trade places, there really is no sense of humor or discernible personality coming from Jack. It's kind of letting like the music talk for him. But when the music is not feeling authentic, it falls flat. And I think by abandoning personality and switching to like this neo-soul aesthetic, I get the vibe that Jack Harlow wants to have this pseudo intellectual air to his project.

Yeah. I find that he is disposing of everything that previously made Jack Harlow. Yeah. If you extricate your own personality from your music and you make a shift into someone

“else's music, all you have is the mask that you're wearing. And you know, I think that the word”

authentic is such a complicated word. But if there's something true to himself, if it's that video game shaggy-haired kid with the out of sync friends, none of that is present at least on

I want to listen to one of the songs on Monica Loan Some. And dissect the sound a little bit more.

Okay. Here's the track from the top. (Music) Sparse instrumental happening here. We're operating with just guitar, bass, drum kit. A piano comes in every now and again to like, hit or not or two. But it feels very intimate musically. You can kind of hear everything that's happening. It would make sense to me if

they're all recording this in the same room. You're trying to flag sophistication in the way

that this sounds. It's a vibe that is like perhaps fit for like a coffee shop or a bookstore

or like an intimate open mic on your college campus like that kind of thing is what I hear in this track. This is a different kid. Bookstore chic. It feels intentional to place this rebrand in those spaces because maybe he's trying to signal an artistic pretension that previously,

“you know, when you listen to Tyler Harrow, when you listen to first class, like, isn't there?”

That's kind of like, lowest common denominator. You're going from like class clown to a student. I think maybe some of the reason why we're hearing the association to the bookstore to the library

is that so much of the internet was taken over in the last decade by low-fi beats to study in

cell 2. And that music is so built upon the beats of J. Dilla who's loose timing and soundscape ends up, you know, being a source of inspiration for so much of the new assault movement, missile query and so we're playing on the D'Angelo records. And so when we hear these sort of like loose timed beats where the kick and the snare kind of head of the beat and the behind the beat, things that are a little woozy, that's exactly what we're hearing on Monica and it doesn't sound

much different than going to that YouTube playlist with that girl studying with her cat next to her. So true. I didn't even think about, but this really is like low-fi hip, I guess like low-fi

“neo-soldeats to study too. Like that's what he is trying to do on these songs.”

Yeah, if anyone needs to give him credit, maybe it's like, you know, even the class clown has to pass their test occasionally. So maybe he's got to get serious and study for his exams. Is that what's happening here? He said I have to lock in real quick. Yeah. But I, musically, I don't think the album is totally shallow. There's subtle moments where he tries to expand the sonic pallet. I think I'll loan some. There's a minute where he brings in these muted trumpets that are kind of nice.

I mean, again a sound that we heard all over Daniela's voodoo, Roy Hargroo's trumpets on a track-lake Spanish joy. So yeah, wearing the influence on a sleeve. It's the same sound. For me, the DeAngelo track that came to mind is this cover feel like making love, which has similar trumpets. Oh, yeah. Really subtle in there. They're like layering with the guitars and the keys.

“And I think that Roy Hargroo was playing both trumpet and fugal horn as well.”

And you get here, it's like behind the mix in the same way. Yeah, that's just, it's two on the nose. It's a costume. It's like Italian. And you bring up the word costume. I think part of what is so comical about this whole rollout is like Jack keeps wearing these outfits that looks so silly on him. And you know, he's wearing his influences honestly, right? Like he's aping DeAngelo's style has sound the way he mixes his records. He is copying someone like the

rapper, commons, outfits, you know, where he's wearing all of these earth tones, turtle necks, and kangle hats, and frameless glasses like that sort of thing. But showcasing your influences like that does not make your sound better. In fact, I feel like it detracts from what you're doing,

it really literally is actually on his sleeve. Not just figuratively. He's, he's, he's dressing up.

“Yeah, for the part. And I'm not sure he was invited to the party. Yeah, and I think another”

misunderstanding that's happening on Monica is there's a musical sophistication in what someone like DeAngelo is doing that is oversimplified in the Jack Harlow take. There's a swirling cloud of emotion in every DeAngelo track. They're sexy. They're sweaty. All of that appeal is subtracted from the Jack Harlow sound. And even the things he's saying, you know, previously like he has these songs that are, I wouldn't say sexy, but charismatic, you know, he flirts in them. I think the

flirting is a cornerstone of his personality. There's lines on this album that are so

unsexy, it feels like he doesn't really understand what Neo's soul is. It's a sexy genre. This is like the most agreed just to me, this line on trade places. Oh my gosh, you know, they should have just put like samples of barista's steaming milk, because all I can think about is just like is cappuccinos. This is cafe music. That's a ridiculous. I wish I could be the lamp. What? Right, because you know it's sexy, lampposts, and handrails.

I could be the fan of the rail that you put your hands on. I'm not like a deep germ of foe, but like you don't touch a handrail if you don't have to. No, totally. I mean, I can't really think of anybody leaning sexily against a lampose. I feel like it's uncomfortable. Maybe this is an example of someone who got so famous that they haven't been outside in a couple of years, so they're like, uh, what did normal people do? They got handrails? Uh, yeah, put my hand on the handrail.

So strange. Odd record. Very odd record. And part of what I find so maybe thorny about this album is that he incorporated like several black musicians and artists on these songs. Robert Glasper plays piano on the track, all of my friends.

What is that? A nod to? It sounds familiar. Sounds like the second track on Led Zeppelin one.

Help me out here. That is Babam gonna leave you? Yeah, try that out.

“I mean, they're both like a minor descending line cliche. I don't know. That's what I heard.”

I think it's interesting though, because Led Zeppelin's entire career is based on the black musical tradition of blues. Okay, totally different vibe. But same descending thing. That's, that that it's literally called a line cliche, uh, which is, I don't know what mean to say it, uncreative, but what I mean to say is uncreative. No, you could say uncreative. I mean, you can make a great song with that descending line

cliche. There's so many of them. cliches are great. Like we could use cliches to like establish a set of expectations and then subvert them. What Jack Harlow's doing is establishing a set of expectations and pretending to live in them. Yeah, he's not really subverting anything. And maybe using cliche is a way to get listeners to connect positively with music that isn't incredibly inspired. And maybe another way that he's doing that is bringing in these acclaimed

black musicians to kind of haul pass it a little bit. You know, like he's able to do this, because he has people like Robert Glasper, like jazz musician Corey Henry, who's playing organ on a couple songs. There's other folks on the record like Mustafa Raven La Ne, Omar Apollo, even does background vocals. People probably put their name on this in good faith and didn't know entirely who this guy was, but he seems to be showing himself. Yeah, the image fundamentally

is not aligning with what he said, what he has done in the past. And that got me thinking, you know,

“what clicked for others? Why is post malone so successful and switching up his whole vibe?”

And Jack Harlow isn't. So when we come back from break, I'd like to take a look at some of the

precedent for Jack Harlow's pivot.

“But what I wanted to tell you, you didn't get a lot of studies. The master by tag-laptop,”

the author of the book, the internet, is a master really great. You can say that you can do it. Yeah, you're a player, right? But you don't understand. Egal, it's a very famous job. Make it a lot of work with this story. And when you then work, you'll see, that's right. Save, this story. Hold it, your money is back. Now post malone.

60 centimeters, only 70 centimeters. Or a garden touch shelf. Only 70 centimeters. And there are all the products in our period and in the Action F action, little price, great, so, hey, hi. I'm Renee Brown.

“And I'm Adam Grant. And we're here to invite you to the curiosity shop.”

A podcast that's a place for listening, wondering, thinking, feeling and questioning. It's going to be fun. We rarely agree.

But we almost never disagree, and we're always learning. That's true.

You can subscribe to the curiosity shop on YouTube or follow in your favorite podcast app to automatically receive new episodes every Thursday. It's interesting to me that Jack Harlow has chosen to abandon the genres that he started his career with, but it also doesn't really come as a surprise, considering, you know, as we said with someone like Led Zeppelin, there's a precedent in music

for white artists coming out to co-op black sounds, reach massive successes doing so. And then in the case of white rappers, pivot. This is the story of pop music throughout history. And in the rap world, there's been white rappers for as long as the genre has been around. You know, I'm not going to sit here and pretend I know everything about the career of vanilla ice. Where, you know, did you not try to make a new metal record? I got to check this whole

on a second. Hard to swallow is the third studio album by American rapper vanilla ice,

and it is categorized as new metal. Wow. Which, uh, new metal featured rapping, but also like moving from a more obviously black genre towards a more white coat of genre. White

“rappers have been successful in the past. I think Paul Wall is like, oh yeah, a white dude from”

the south who has been extremely influential in Southern rap. Wow, baby. It's the biggest challenge. I'm some like a bowler bowler. I can't imagine being tripping out for the old student power. You know, I think of also Beastie Boys, defining white rapper group. But for the sake of understanding Jack, I have three examples to kind of show the truncated history of white rapper vibes, which is as of late. Okay. So, uh, where do we start? What do we learn?

I'd like to start with post-malon. We brought him up before in this conversation. When he started his career, it was of a similar vibe as Jack Harlar, right? We talked about white Iverson, how it kind of paraded black culture references basketball, the title, white Iverson is self-aware. You know, it's kind of winking like I'm the white Allen Iverson, sure. And the music is in this cloud rap space, which came at the right time because he was able to

chase the convergence of rap pop R&B, all of these different sounds. I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning, I'm burning, I've a song on you. Charlie, imagine you're in high school when that song comes out. Generational. Uh, you know, I still, as I did in the 90s, probably would have been in the back corner at the middle school dance. That first record of his that white Iverson is on Stony was one of the

defining records of my high school experience. I heard it played in cars. I heard it on the radio. It was everywhere. And part of what I like about that record is that there's a fluidity. Oh, yeah.

To genre that I think is really special for post Malone and country, I think, has always been

than white Iverson or congratulations or other singles that came off this album.

What you can bring yourself, say no, and I never, this is like a Gothic Stomp clap music.

Yeah, it's like a weird Stomp clap trap hybrid. Yeah, so what you're saying is that the pivot to the post Malone has made in his career are kind of all invited from the very beginning, even within White Iverson, you hear the sort of goofy playful nature in some of the lyrics that post Malone presents. It also is sung in the sort of romantic kind of quality. Yeah, it's like it's coming to you in a dream. Yeah, it is playing at the intersection of multiple genres. And

“there's plenty of ways that he certainly was dressing up as a rap star. I think he has worn”

different outfits, no doubt, in the way that he has presented himself, but the country was there. And so it's not as much of a hard pivot. Country is ascending, while rap has been struggling on the Billboard chart over the last couple of years. So, you know, he might be chasing commerce, he might be chasing his interests, but they were plausibly there from the very beginning. And F1 trillion is the end point of the pivot. It is like I said, a country album.

It spans the breath of country music. There's even a bluegrass song in there with Billy Strings.

“Right. The album gave him the incredibly popular number one hit. I had some help with Morgan Wallen.”

Oh, there's some stop and clap in there. A record F1 trillion sounds like the name of a rap album. Obviously, adapting the Ford F150, but into sort of like, you know, Bracadillo over the top luxury status of F1 trillion. But then what we get are fiddle, twang, country drums. There's even a song with Dolly Parton, which to bring Jack Harlow back into the picture. Jack once said that he wants to get Dolly Parton on a record with him to do some quote, "hard shit."

So, I feel like maybe Jack is trying to chase the post-malone of it all. The difference,

though, is that post always had the image of someone who would be suited for country music.

Goes to show how important image is for successful rebrand. And it doesn't feel like he's cosplaying or wearing a costume, which is, as we've been talking about, one of Jack's issues. He seems to be wearing a cultural costume. I hadn't seen post-dress up like, you know, he was from Austin, Texas until this album release. But it's different wearing, you know, a cowboy high and a western shirt. Yep. Then it is wearing like a kingle trying to become in, like,

it's a different thing. Very different when you're directly copying a specific person's style,

“whether that's sound or visual, and especially when it's racially coded. Another artist I think of”

that did a radical genre pivot in the past decade is the artist formerly known as Machine Gun Kelly. He actually changed his name to just MGK used to be Machine Gun Kelly. And is that, is that a nod to a

song? The song Machine Gun Kelly? Is that where you got the name? I've never known. There's a song called

Machine Gun Kelly? Are you kidding me? You know how big old James Taylor fan? Maybe not. No. I know fire, rain. That's James Taylor. No, you got to spin it. Okay, so obviously MGK is borrowing the name from the original Machine Gun Kelly who was a provision era gangster, but I just really love the idea that in fact he was a major James Taylor head. Well, when MGK was Machine Gun Kelly, his music, which came out in the back half of the 2010s was trap music. If you listened to a song like

logo from his 2018 record binge, you hear in your face vocals and a bass heavy beat. It fell

listen to and anywhere else. No, it's not an easy listen. That was 2018 when this song came out

“2020 hits in MGKland and things switch up. He catches the wave of the pop punk revival at the right”

time and releases the album tickets to my downfall, which was one of the formative records for the revival of pop punk music at the beginning of the decade. Here's the track my X's best friend.

Ultimately a pop song. Yeah, is that one of the tracks that he did with Travis Barker? Yeah,

from a blank one. Okay, so that's kind of an interesting transition where like you know Travis Barker who's one of those great pop punk drummers finds this late career pivot into like making trap beats does work with like low lane and XXX and Tession and also of course MGK and so it's kind of like Travis Barker's like this pivot producer between hip hop and pop punk and MGK rides that wave. Yeah, and it's somehow both pop punk but also trap like there's trap high hats in there.

Yeah, the t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t-t. Yeah, but it aligns itself more with something like five seconds of the summer. You know what I mean? This like radio-friendly boy band rock coated vibe. That is

“so different than what he was doing previously prior to the pandemic. And I think the pandemic is”

a reason why this is successful. You know, there's kind of an angst brewing among Gen Z and he met the moment where it was at an MGK carved out a specific niche in shepherding this revival. There wasn't much new music in this ballpark when tickets to my downfall came out. So that kind of set him apart from the rest of the pack. Jack Harlow, by comparison, loves the black music he's taking from sure, but there's nothing to set it apart from others, particularly black artists, making

better, more inspired versions of the same music. Can I just use this as an opportunity to once again on the show play this song, "Cleashay" by MGK featuring my least favorite lyric of the decade. Nope. You can't create nostalgia. Nope. Yep. Exactly, right? It's like you can't.

Nostalgia is something that we have. It's a feeling first. Something we aspire to from the past.

You can't create nostalgia in the moment. That line kills me. It's his number one stream song on Spotify right now, which I'm noticing is just three songs up from the song "Lonely Road" with Jelly Roll, who's the third artist that I know you want to just speak about. Yeah, so similar to MGK in post-molog. Jelly Roll, I feel like, has been everywhere the past few years. Even he used to be a white rapper. I feel like people don't talk about that enough. He has an early series of

“mixed tapes called "Gamblin on a white boy," which I think is a great title. It makes me laugh.”

Here's a track from "Gamblin on a white boy" four called "F with They Talk About." What? Is this like 2,000 hip-hop? It's exactly. It's a line with what was the sound of Southern hip-hop at the time. The shift happens after Jelly Roll spends time in prison. It kind of gets his life together as he said publicly over and over again. This narrative of Jelly Roll has been repeated at Nazium. This decade, he's adopted the aesthetics of country music like

Post-Molone. One of his first big singles being the track, Need of Favor.

"I only talked to God when I need a favor, and I only prayed when I got the prayer. So who the hell am I? Who the hell am I to expect a savior? Oh, if I...

country, but I see it more as kind of a hybrid between contemporary Christian music and outlaw

“country. It kind of exists in the middle of those two worlds. It's different than Post-Molone's”

bro country. You could see Post-Molone drinking out a red solo cups at Jason Health Dean's bar in Nashville with Florida, Georgia, line or whatever, but Jelly Roll, there's a sense of humility in his work. He found religion. Oddly enough, Need of Favor reminds me of a song from another white rapper, Bubba Sparks's Deliverance. Deliverance is a timble in project, as you can hear.

I was so wondering. I actually don't know that track. I'm sure I've heard it in the background.

It's just not my music, but I was like, this sounds so similar to just a fight or what what is going on? Obviously, it's a timble in beat. It's a timble in track. Bubba Sparks has a few

“really big hits. I think of his track Ugly, which I think timble in fashion does a companion piece”

to get your freak on, because the beat transitions in the back half of that track. The connection that I see between Bubba Sparks and Jelly Roll is that they both kind of infuse this backward country sensibility into hip hop. But Jelly Roll's music often skews more Christian, more directly referencing the Bible and God. But I think Jelly Roll's pivot is successful, because it's motivated by real life growth and changed. His narrative is the project.

I don't listen to Jelly Roll. I know nearly everything about his life from the past 20 years, because it's just repeated over and over again in a way to maybe give the music more legitimacy. There seems to be plausible motivations for all three artists that you have pointed out. But all three artists have moved from a historically, traditionally more black genre to historically, traditionally more white genre. And have been able to move their audiences with them

oftentimes sometimes growing their audience as well. So when we think about this in context of Jack Harlow, Jack Harlow has instead pivoted into R&B. A genre that was originally labeled as race records, as music executives marketed in a way that was intentionally segregated. And that's the musical lineage that he's stepping into. So earlier, you know, I mentioned my grand question where have all the white rappers gone. And as we've highlighted, people have pivoted out of the genre,

but not everybody does. You know, thinking of someone like Paul Wall, who still continues to make Southern hip hop music, and more successful than any of these people, Eminem. Yeah, of course. I don't think there was a defined shift in Eminem's career or his image or his genre over time.

“And maybe that's why he's so successful. What do you mean, note, no shift of identity. He went”

from being Slim Shady to Marshall Mathers to Eminem. There are many versions. He's got all these characters that exist, though, to your point all within the world of rap. You make a great point. Maybe that's why he's successful. He's able to switch it up while staying kind of within his lane. And he's to have like a really big Eminem phase when I was in like, you know, sixth grade or whatever. So I was very familiar with this catalog. And something that I appreciate about his work

is that he's always able to balance the serious with the silly. Maybe that's why people

still connect with him because he's not one note. He contains multitudes. You know, I think of how songs like cleaning out my closet. This really dark, confessional track. Is on the same album as without me. This bouncy silly Slim Shady owed to celebrity. Like the two vibes are in equal standing.

rappers in all time. I mean, that's something that also distinguishes him. He's like he's not playing

something. He really is one of the most excellent lyricists. His flow, his capacity to have expert level rhythmic dexterity with the narrative continuity and creative rhyme schemes. That's one of the things that makes him stand out. Yeah, I guess none of these other people really have the skills to back up a continued career in this field. Hey, you said it.

The idea of being a quote unquote white rapper is ultimately limiting. You know, if you're not willing

to push the envelope, develop your talent, try new sounds. You're going to be stuck in a rut

“forever and feel like you need to switch. Or your career is going to be non-existent a few years”

after you come out. Look at Macklemore. You mean Macklemore and Ryan Lewis who won the 2014 Grammy for Best Rap album over Kendrick Lamar? Yeah, and people don't look back fondly

on that win. No, they don't let up. No. I mean, yeah, because it's not just doing some internal

looking. It's also like, you got into your homework. You're like part of a lineage that you have to be conscious of. You have to be contributing back to meaningfully and don't just tip your toe in.

“So looking at these examples and Eminem as a figure and rap, I think there's two things that Jack”

Harlow needs to do if he wants his next album to really be the one to pop off. He needs to hone up his technical skills, get really, really good at rhyming, and he needs to wait into the waters of country. The proof is in the putting people. I mean, I won't be surprised by that pivot, but I'll say that I'm not holding my breath. Better get to those banjo lessons, Jack Harlow and fast. So something I was thinking about when making this episode is the fact that

“there are still white wrappers in the world. You know, I think of a young whine who started in”

cloud wrap and has pivoted into this rock electronic, autor space that he finds himself in. Netspend who I spoke about on my rolling loud recap episode a while back just released his debut album early life crisis and it peaked at 39 on the Billboard 200. So there's still room for white wrappers. Where did they go from here though? That's the big question. Isn't it? Nashville has room for everybody. So it's room for you in country music. Switched on pop is produced by

Ariana Cruz edited by Lesis Sop engineered by Brand MacFarlane illustrations by Iris Gottlieb video by Nick Rips. I'm music is by Zack Tenario in Josie Adams of Arc Iris. Remember the box media podcast that we're going to production of Vulture. It's part of New York mag and subscribe and my mag.com/pod. You can find more stuff with Switched on pop on our website at Switched on pop all the various merch things like that or newsletter. It's all there. We'll be

back again next week with another episode on Tuesday and until then. Thanks for listening. you