First, the elephant in the room. Ahead of the release of his fourth studio album, the neo-soul-leaning Monica, Jack Harlow sat down with The New York Times‘ Popcast to discuss the record. The conversation was mostly engaging until race entered the chat. Asked why he hadn’t made the now-predictable pivot toward pop or country, Harlow declared he’d gone “blacker” by making a neo-soul album. Cue the predictable churn of memes across Twitter, where Harlow was recast as everything from Chalky Braxton to White Thought.
Monica does indeed suffer from overexplanation. At roughly half an hour, it’s one of Harlow’s most coherent projects, a sleek and carefully assembled pivot from the more unserious terrain that has defined much of his career so far. Framing that pivot as creative maturation lands about as gracefully as if he’d shown up on a Zach Bryan single. Which is a shame, because the songs here are among Harlow’s strongest: understated, consistent, and clearly sequenced with intention. Norwegian producer Aksel Arvid, alongside musicians including Robert Glasper, Cory Henry, and Jermaine Paul, gives the album an easy warmth. Whether you hear that as tasteful restraint or calculated maneuvering probably depends on your tolerance for Harlow himself.
On lead single “Trade Places,” Harlow sings about wanting to swap places with everything from a lamp post to a fence to a handrail in order to get closer to the object of his affection. It’s romantic, a little corny, and disarmingly sincere. The same goes for “All My Friends,” where Ravyn Lenae helps buoy Harlow’s limited vocals as he plays the hopeless romantic who comes on too strong despite his friends’ warnings. In a pop landscape still overrun with tedious performances of toxicity, there’s something refreshing about how harmless these songs are. On “My Winter,” Harlow is split between two women, aptly dubbed Winter and Summer, and finds himself wanting one just as the other comes into view. (I won’t apologize for being moved by this.)
What makes Monica more persuasive than its premise suggests is how little it asks of Harlow as a vocalist. He is not suddenly a deep-feeling soul man; the album wisely avoids demanding that he become one. Instead, its best songs rely on texture, pacing, and arrangement — muted keys, unfussy bass lines, drums that never push too hard — to create a sense of intimacy he can slide into without overselling it. If earlier Harlow songs often lived or died on his boyish charm, these tend to work by lifting the charade altogether. He sounds less like a star straining for gravitas than an artist finally aware of the limits of his range, and building within them.
That, maybe, is what makes Monica at once easy to mock and easier to enjoy than expected. It is not a bold reinvention, nor is it the kind of aesthetic leap Harlow seems to think it is. But it is a reasonably effective recalibration. It works as a more flattering showcase for his strengths than the albums that came before it. The issue is less the music than the framing around it. On the Keith Oshiro-shot cover, Harlow appears in motion blur, wearing a brown cap styled like a white Musiq Soulchild. Monica is a better album than its detractors want to admit, but one whose presentation invites skepticism. Had Harlow simply dropped it without explanation, the internet still would’ve clowned him. But at least then he might’ve seemed in on the joke.
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