Jack Harlow - Say Hello

You're listening to Song Exploder, where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made. I'm Hrishikesh Hirway. [gentle music] Jack Harlow is from Louisville, Kentucky, and started performing and releasing music in 2015 when he was in high school. In 2020, he released his first album, which went double platinum. He was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Performance. He's had multiple number one hits across his first three albums. And for his fourth album, Monica, which just came out in March 2026, he switched things up dramatically, and I was curious how and why. How did someone who had so much success as a rapper approach a new way of making music? So for this episode, I spoke to Jack Harlow about the song Say Hello, which is the closing track on Monica.

[singing] Ooh, oh. Ooh, oh. Say hello. Ooh, oh. Ooh, oh. Say hello. Ooh, oh. My name's Jack Harlow. I was working on a different album for two years after Jackman, my last one, and it was good, but I didn't think it was exciting or surprising. It just wasn't distinct enough, and it also felt like something I'd done before, which, you know, repeating yourself is boring. And I was getting more and more frustrated, and I was dreading going to the studio. And, you know, as soon as recording becomes work, you're in trouble, I think. Not that there's no work ethic involved. Of course, sometimes you have to grind it out. But when you're trying to get inspired and it feels like labor, that's something to take as a sign. So finally, I just took three weeks off. I remember talking about it with my engineer right before I took that three-week break and sorta having to reconcile it in front of him, almost a little embarrassed, saying, "Yeah, man, you know, I just gotta think." And he said it out loud for me. I was already thinking it, but he put it really well. He's like, "I think you just need to choose a North Star that is distinct and definitive." So I took a lot of walks. You know, I think part of the reason I was dreading going to the studio is I had just moved to New York, and I would look out the occasional window I might have in a studio, or I'd go outside. I'd say, "Wow, I'd rather be out here than be in there recording." And so I decided to think about, "What do I actually wanna do? What am I listening to? What does my ear crave?" I've always been attracted to melody, and I listen to a lot of melodic music. I find I prefer melodic music, and I think there's something so timeless and emotional about melody. A lot of my early stuff had a lot more melody involved, and then it's almost like I found my rap tone, and I was getting such a great response from it, and it became something I could lean on so consistently that I think I got further and further away from melody. But the genre of neo-soul as a whole was super influential to me, just how pleasant it was. So I wanted something that in 20 years I'll still like the sound of. [gentle music] About three years ago, I first caught wind of Axel Arvid, a loop maker from Norway, and there's a lot of loop makers in hip-hop that are over in Europe that are almost faceless to the rest of the industry and just