With Machine Gun Kelly and Post Malone swapping gold grills for guitars this year, are white rappers using Black aesthetics becoming a thing of the past?
With Jack Harlow’s major label debut Thats What They All Say selling strongly alongside a bumper deluxe version of Eminem’s Music to be Murdered By, white rappers are riding unexpectedly high at the end of 2020.
Harlow, a 22-year-old from Kentucky, celebrates being a dorky outsider who has somehow made it to the top of the rap game (“At 16 I never thought I would look this cute”) while using language that is usually cringeworthy coming from suburban white people. On his Grammy-nominated single What’s Poppin he makes reference to “whips” and “certified freak hoes” – but he has enough charisma to carry it off, and he has earned co-signs from Black artists such as Lil Wayne, DaBaby and Big Sean.
