It is the opening night of Jack Harlow’s first headlining European tour, an event the 24-year-old US rapper feels obliged to commemorate in wistful style. “I could never have envisioned coming to Birmingham, England, and selling out a room like this,” he sighs. “3,000 people.” You could suggest this show of humility amounts to laying it on a bit thick, given the size of the venues he’s just packed in the US – he arrives in Brum fresh from the State Farm Arena, Atlanta, which is six times as big – and indeed the fact he’s due to play Wembley Arena tomorrow. Then again, perhaps it has the ring of truth about it: what Louisville, Kentucky-born rapper could imagine playing a venue in Digbeth where the Twang host their legendary festive Twangmas shows?
Whichever it is, the O2 Academy is positively bulging at the seams, with an audience that skews distinctly to the late teen and female. The loudest noise they make all night is when Harlow asks if there are any girls here with their best friend (“the girl who would never fuck your boyfriend,” he adds, for clarification). The response is so deafening and goes on so long that even Harlow looks a little taken aback. He is both handsome and #relatable – on stage tonight, he’s bespectacled and dressed down in a long-sleeve T-shirt and cargo pants – and a better rapper than the detractors he keeps mentioning in his lyrics would have you believe. He’s big on letting the backing track drop out and performing a capella to prove it.
His is a very modern kind of success, bolstered by TikTok – which alighted with relish on both his 2020 breakthrough hit What’s Poppin’ and this year’s global smash First Class – and, occasionally, as much to do with his charming, funny presence online as it is with his music. His hits are more ruthlessly effective than undeniable, as evidenced by tonight’s show, bookended by performances of Dua Lipa and First Class. The former’s chorus is vaguely predicated on wanting to have sex with the titular singer, precisely the kind of meme-friendly content that attracts attention online, but there’s not much of a song attached to it. The latter’s hook is so fantastic that you almost feel churlish for pointing out that it was also fantastic when it was the chorus of Black Eyed Peas vocalist Fergie’s 2007 hit Glamorous: it’s a little unclear what Harlow is bringing to the party, beyond neatly playing on Gen Z’s ongoing love affair with 2000s pop.
That said, live might be the best way to experience Jack Harlow. He zips through tracks at high speed: 24 songs in barely an hour, his earliest hits conjoined into a medley. It’s a smartly relentless approach that means the kind of longueurs found on his patchy second album, Come Home the Kids Miss You, are noticeable by their absence. The charisma which he struggles to translate on to record is also a lot more evident on stage: evident enough, in fact, to carry a show that doesn’t have much visual excitement beyond a screen behind him showing amorphous blobs of colour as he performs.
His between-song patter is just the right side of slick, adapted to reference going to “the pub” and discuss what Americans call soccer with the audience, a little hampered by the fact that he clearly doesn’t know the names of any local teams: “Who here supports Manchester City?” he asks to a chorus of boos. “Chelsea? Wigan Athletic?” He’s been walking around Birmingham today, he tells the crowd, who cheer in anticipation of a glowing homage to the city’s manifold delights. “It was definitely interesting. Maybe we came on a weird day or something.”
If their civic pride is wounded, they don’t show it: as Harlow launches into I Wanna See Some Ass they scream and sing along, as they have been doing all night. “I’m coming the fuck back!” he yells, delightedly. Probably not here specifically – there’s an arena a few miles up the road – but that aside, you don’t doubt it for a minute.
