There’s a meme I’ve always found pretty funny but never took that seriously, some form of Niggas pushing 30 still tryna rap… it’s time for jazz. You could easily replace jazz with neo-soul: The gist is, it’s time for earth-toned turtlenecks, evenings spent in the crib with a glass of Merlot, and, above all, spiritual maturity. That to grow up is to exchange the niggas, bitches, hos, guns, sex, drugs, sagging pants, and ego-driven drum machine nonsense of hip-hop for real music with real instruments and moral integrity. As if, behind all of the burning incense and astrology of Mama’s Gun, Erykah Badu wasn’t talking cash shit; as if the nuanced yearn-fest of Raphael Saadiq’s Instant Vintage wasn’t also horny as hell; as if Bilal didn’t use his jazz-trained vocals on 1st Born Second to be nearly as obsessed with pimp culture as Too $hort. The best neo-soul is raw, prickly music that’s way too emotionally complex to be reduced to a moodboard aesthetic.
Jack Harlow didn’t get the memo. Apparently, the 28-year-old hitmaker’s pivot from pop-rap player—he’s often compared to Drake, but his feelings are nowhere near as extreme; I think of his recent hits more the way I do the kinda witty radio rap love joints of the 2000s like Fabolous’ “Can’t Let You Go” and Chingy’s “One Call Away”—to sultry and half-wounded R&B city boy was motivated by a change in lifestyle. Ahead of his new album, Monica, he moved from his home state of Kentucky to New York and started thumbing through James Baldwin paperbacks, dressing like Be-era Common, hitting up independent Manhattan movie theaters (watching stuff like Hitchcock and Luis Buñuel and John Cassavettes, according to his Letterboxd account, conveniently made public in the weeks leading up to his album), and becoming the kind of guy who, as he told The New York Times’ Popcast, “would much rather go to dinner than go to the club.” Admittedly, yes, it sounds cool to live like a character in Love Jones, but on Monica, Harlow tries to prove his emotional and intellectual depth with cultural signifiers rather than the music.
“It just struck me that I would want to do something a little more egoless,” said the Jackman in that same Times interview, later adding, “As I’m getting older, I’m having more trouble reconciling being braggadocious on record.” On to neo-soul, a genre that could only be seen as a vessel for humble, egoless artistry to someone who has engaged with the genre primarily through interracial couple TikTok accounts and Instagram slideshows. To his credit, though, on the album, Harlow—along with Norwegian producer Aksel Arvid, known for his work with PinkPantheress—flexes the checkbook like a SEC football booster to recruit a team of jazz and R&B pros. Here and there Robert Glasper is on the piano, every now and then Cory Henry brings his organ, and Jermaine Paul is on the bass with a whole team of session musicians. Meanwhile, overqualified singers like Ravyn Lenae, Mustafa, and Omar Apollo do some of the background vocal riffs that Harlow’s limited range won’t reach. It’s the sort of musical infrastructure so reliable and expensive that you could pull damn-near anyone off the street and prop them up like the boss in Weekend at Bernie’s and they’d still sound half-decent.
Too bad Monica is some of the most sexless, edgeless audio melatonin I’ve heard in a minute. That seems to be an intentional decision, considering he’s the guy who two and a half years ago rapped, “I’ll choke you, but I ain’t no killer, baby,” on his Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hit “Lovin’ On Me.” Self-censoring over the album’s gentle coffee shop instrumentation, the general idea is that he’s an honest-to-a-fault gentleman who has messed up a few times, and suffers from loving too hard. “All of my friends say I keep fallin’/Fallin’ in love way too often/Tellin’ me slow down and be cautious,” he sings in a pained whimper on the hook of “All My Friends,” which only gets a little life from Ravyn Lenae’s hums. On “Trade Places,” he lilts, “I wish I could trade places with that lamppost/I like the way you lean on that damn post/I could be the handrail that you put your hands on,” flirting that would be too chaste even for Bible camp.
Who wants their R&B to come with the social niceties and sexual energy of an episode of The Great British Bake Off? I sure as hell don’t. That doesn’t mean that all R&B has to be some freak shit, but a drop of lust and passion goes a long way. Harlow sounds so mild-mannered and timid that you would think breakups hurt as much as a papercut. On the Khalid-esque snooze “Lonesome,” memories of a relationship fade-out come back to him with the urgency of remembering to turn off the front porch light; as the Sunday church organs of “Against the Grain” swell, his smooth-talk is cliché and awkward, not helped by his lethargic shower melodies. “Against the Grain” is bookended by his parents sharing their When Harry Met Sally…-style meet-cute, a sweet moment with the casual romance and lowkey desire that Jack’s writing is missing.
The tolerable songs on Monica add a bit of spice and color. On the calm “Say Hello,” Harlow finds a Nate Dogg-ish rap-sing groove and for once he goes into enough detail that the breakup feels sort of real: “One day I’ll be walkin’ by the place you stay, ooh, woah.” Much of the album has a muted, “soft music to study to” vibe, but the snap&B of “Prague” has both some bounce and a tiny glimpse of actual relationship tensions. “My Winter” is the only true playboy jam, where he juggles two women at once, but he’s so self-aware of coming off like a dickhead that he’s defensive instead of just living it. “Layin’ right next to you, thinkin’ of her/What a curse” should be gold—one of those ridiculous and unearned moments of self-pity common in male R&B—but it’s not, because the way he coos the lyric is so flat. A singer who wasn’t out of their depth could have underlined the subtle joke of “What a curse” by hanging onto the note a little too long or jumping to a different vocal register. With Jack, you barely even notice. Matter of fact, none of his trademark charisma or humor can be found on the entire album, which seems like a complete misunderstanding of the genre as self-serious and inoffensive.
What Jack Harlow seems to be betting on with Monica is that his genre switch-up won’t be perceived the same way as Post Malone going country or MGK turning to mainstream pop-punk, because neo-soul is, as he put it somewhat in jest on Popcast, “Blacker.” That’s savvy thinking but the strategy’s off, because the criticism of those artists has less to do with which genres are whiter or Blacker, and more to do with white rappers switching to lanes that they view as more prestigious and respected. But hip-hop and neo-soul are two sides of the same coin, which should be obvious to someone doing Soulquarian cosplay—down to recording Monica at Electric Lady Studios, the onetime home of the group’s jam sessions. Instead this album feels like the rarest kind of unintentional parody, so ridiculous and transparent in its intent that I really get a kick out of it. But the truth is that none of Monica’s parodic elements would matter that much if the music felt like a genuine experiment rather than a self-serving, big-budget attempt to deepen his image. At least there’s still one thing left in this world that can’t be bought.
