Jack Harlow is giving Drake his flowers.
In a new conversation with Rolling Stone, Harlow spoke about his love for Drizzy’s 2015 mixtape, If You’re Reading This It’s Too Late.
“I remember vividly this album coming out and being like, 'Oh, Drake's the best rapper alive,' right then. It was powerful, powerful,” he said around the 14:10 minute mark.
The 6 God would later hop on Jack’s 2022 song, “Churchill Downs.”
“It was an amazing experience,” Harlow said of working with Drake. “Watching him work, not punching in. … It's just cool to see a rapper really be a rapper and not be some packaged thing that a team is putting together.”
Harlow then went on to say that it was “so cool” witnessing Drake use his skillset “in real time.”
“The minimalism of his approach. I know he’s been known to strip things off of beats, act as a producer in his own way. I relate to that,” Harlow continued. “I like to take things away, I like to reduce down to the bare essentials and maybe build back up from there.
“I think he does a great job of recognizing what’s actually necessary. A lot of his greatest songs are so spacious, him and a couple instruments. And I think people forget, just either out of habit or a need to compensate, that you don’t need that much, sometimes. It’s really in the essentials. That’s something I definitely learned from him.”
Harlow thinks that Drake has gotten “better at rapping” on a “technical level.” He added, “I think he gets more skilled, finds new pockets, new flows.”
Drake is gearing up for the release of his ninth album, Iceman, slated to arrive on May 15. Harlow told Rolling Stone that he’s “anticipating” the project’s arrival, just like everyone else.
Harlow recently dropped his fourth album, Monica, which was mired in controversy following a comment that on a March episode of the New York Times’ Popcast that he “got Blacker” while making the album and diving deeper into a sound more aligned with Black music. “I love Black music. I love the sound of Black music,” Harlow said at the time.
