The Number Ones: Jack Harlow’s “First Class”

In The Number Ones, I'm reviewing every single #1 single in the history of the Billboard Hot 100, starting with the chart's beginning, in 1958, and working my way up into the present. The column is now biweekly, alternating with The Alternative Number Ones on Mondays. Book Bonus Beat: The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal the History of Pop Music.

There's a line that AI music practitioners use habitually, a talking point that they've turned into an article of faith. Thus far, it's been hard to manufacture a whole lot of public enthusiasm around the idea of generative AI in popular music. It's a silly novelty at best, a plague that must be eradicated at worst. Other than those who stand to profit from the enterprise, very few people are into that shit. As the midterm elections approach, almost no politician is willing to say that they want data centers built anywhere near where their constituents might live. But you'll still see AI-music foot-soldiers — possibly paid, possibly just doing it for the love of the game — who insist that the backlash is shortsighted, that every new development in technology has led to people coming along and saying that the music made with these gizmos is not actually music at all.

If I'm speaking honestly, this particular talking point is probably the most effective one that the AI music industry has managed to formulate thus far. That's probably mostly because their other arguments are such transparent bullshit. Companies like Suno don't level the playing field for untrained new voices who wouldn't have access otherwise. If you can't be bothered to at least teach yourself how to put together beats on a digital workstation, something that has never been easier than it is right now, that's a you problem. Along those same lines, I think it's fucking stupid to argue that AI art is inevitable and that we should just roll over and accept it. I'm a human being with agency. I can decide not to accept it. I can say: Fuck that shit. Shills can and will continue to use their talking points, and I will not be moved.

The only time I ever paused for even a millisecond and said "hmm" was when one of the guys from Two Shell, a masked British dance duo who have some tracks that I liked, attempted to justify using AI in their music, comparing reactions to the backlash against synthesizers when they were first invented. Along the same lines, plenty of people once thought that sampling was outright thievery, that songs made with samples weren't really music. Commenters on this very column sometimes made that argument when rap songs first started showing up here. When I saw what the Two Shell guy said, I took the slightest instant to consider that maybe I was on the wrong side of history regarding AI music before once again arriving at the conclusion that this was dumb, that this fool was just trying to rationalize a gross, lame practice that stands to make a few rich asshole even richer. Even got myself quoted in The New Yorker for literally saying, "Fuck that shit." (Shout out to Kelefa Sanneh, the critic who I most wanted to emulate when I first got into the game.)

The thing is: Synthesizers and samplers still require a level of human creativity. Seen from a certain perspective, they can become tools of lazy people, sure. But to use them to make music, you still have to have an idea. The earliest days of synths and samplers produced some of the most exciting music ever made because the instruments were rough and raw and untested and new. Those records now sound cheap and urgent and rickety in some truly appealing ways. They've got a rough energy, a lack of slickness — the exact opposite of the uncanny buffed shine on every example of AI music I've ever heard.

If anyone has ever used AI music to express an actual feeling, to get something off their chest, I haven't heard it. Instead, the people typing their little prompts into their little apps simply take advantage of a mashed-up slurry of the vast recorded history of human music, the stuff that the AI companies continue to scrape for data, to make more content, presenting it to the world as consumable mush. Living through this moment, I can kind of see how previous generations might've had the same reaction to records made with synths or samplers, but I can't agree.

For a sample-based song to be as pointless as AI music, it would have to do nothing clever or novel with the track that it uses as source material. It would have to use that music as a primitive, infantile distraction, adding no extra juice to the original reference. It would have to just put a little bit of extraneous extra bullshit on top of a song that everyone already knew. It would have to be entirely devoid of ideas.

You can see where I'm going here. This theoretical sample-based song, one that's just as artless as the AI slop coming out today, would have to use its source material to jingle keys in front of our stupid faces. It would have to be something like Jack Harlow's "First Class."

I have dreaded this day for years. How am I supposed to write this column? In a world where I've already written a Number Ones column about Fergie's "Glamorous," how do I rattle off another one about a song that's basically just Fergie's "Glamorous" with some half-asleep rapping over it? This isn't like all the times I've had to write columns about covers of songs that already appeared in this space. It's not even like the times when I've had to talk about #1 hits that sample other #1 hits. It's something else, something far less substantial. It's a lightweight original track that has been transformed into something even more lightweight. Jack Harlow's "First Class" resists meaning and interpretation. It's only barely a song.

By itself, the 2007 Fergie hit "Glamorous" is just fine. I don't really have any issues with it. I wouldn't say that it's a good song, exactly, but it does its job. "Glamorous" nicely encapsulates the trashiness of a certain era, though not quite as well as certain other Fergie songs might. (In the past year or so, I have heard "London Bridge" pop up on what feels like a million soundtracks. Most recently, it appeared in the early moments of Lance Oppenheim's Primetime, serving as a sense-memory shorthand and pulling us right back to the overheated cultural moment where something like To Catch A Predator could exist.) "Glamorous" isn't really about anything. It's producer Polow Da Don, on a huge hot streak at the time, fashioning a whole new song out of his recycled beat for a rejected Gwen Stefani remix and turning it into the third of five hits from Fergie's one big solo album The Dutchess. I mostly forgot all about "Glamorous" after that song had its moment, but I guess Jack Harlow didn't.

Jack Harlow was 24 when he released his song "First Class," which means he was eight years old when Fergie dropped "Glamorous." When Harlow was a little kid, when he first formulated the idea that he could practice really hard and become a rap star, his mom would play a lot of Black Eyed Peas around the house. "Glamorous" must've left an impression. When Harlow grew up and became a pop-rap phenom like the Black Eyed Peas before him, he needed the instant readymade hit that would push him over the top and capitalize on all the goodwill that he'd built up. He went straight to Fergie.

Harlow had a very, very quick rise from nerdy teenage regional novelty favorite to crossover superstar. His race has a lot to do with that. It has a lot to do with why he caught on as a nerdy teenage regional novelty in the first place. Here was a gawky-looking white kid who could kick smooth, assured, technically proficient Drake-style brag-rap. He could do it with the best of them, and that's exactly what he did when he got DaBaby, Tory Lanez, and Lil Wayne on his "Whats Poppin" remix in 2020. That song became Harlow's breakout hit, climbing all the way to #2 and eventually going diamond. (In terms of pure numbers, the "Whats Poppin" remix is still his biggest song, and it's probably also his best. It's a 9.) It took a while, but Harlow's major label debut, 2020's That's What They All Say, went double platinum. He was on his way.

Harlow got a big boost when he rapped his ass off on Lil Nas X's 2021 chart-topper "Industry Baby." He became an internet personality pretty quickly, too. Harlow grew out of his teenage awkwardness in full view of the public, and he did it at the exact right time. In interviews and social media videos, he emanated a calm, self-effacing flirtiness that made for good content. If you spent enough time on the internet back then, you might remember the clip of Harlow attempting to charm the drop-dead gorgeous rap star Saweetie on the red carpet of the 2021 BET Awards. (Saweetie's biggest hit, the 2021 Doja Cat collab "Best Friend," peaked at #14. Good song) Harlow was unsuccessful in that moment, but at least he tried. There were a lot more clips like that, too. As I write this, a 2021 fan-edit YouTube video with the title "jack harlow being a natural flirt for 5 mins straight" has 12 million views.

Also! Millions upon millions of teenagers have done their very best to copy Harlow's haircut. He's the primary reason that white boys around America are still getting perms. Earlier this year, I took my son to an A$AP Rocky arena show, and that crowd was Jack Harlow broccoli haircuts as far as the eye could see, on kids of every conceivable race. What I'm trying to say here is: Harlow had momentum. He had eyes on him. When it came time to follow up That's What They All Say, Harlow aimed straight for the crossover zone. He tried to make the album that would cement his place on the A-list.

Harlow's 2022 album Come Home The Kids Miss You isn't any kind of artistic swing, but you can tell that it's a record with a budget. Every song has at least four credited producers. The featured guests are all huge names: Drake, Lil Wayne, Justin Timberlake, Pharrell, some uncredited Snoop Dogg ad-libs, John Mayer randomly playing guitar on a couple of tracks. The samples, even beyond the Fergie one that we're talking about today, are instantly recognizable and presumably quite expensive.

Harlow does what he's supposed to do on the most of the album, rapping with a certain level of charming flair. But I don't know. Maybe he just wasn't ready for that kind of push, or maybe he was too ready to become pure product. Come Home The Kids Miss You is too fluffy and insubstantial to register as much more than a replacement-level crossover rap record, something smooth to put on when you're driving to work or getting ready to go out. Harlow never radiates the urgent magnetism that the real titans always bring. He never announces himself as a real star. The song "Churchill Downs" is illustrative. First, Harlow does his perfectly acceptable Drake facsimile. He charms. He flexes. He talks shit cleverly. Then the real Drake arrives and easily eclipses him. You don't even have to like Drake to acknowledge that Drake is a far better Drake than Jack Harlow could ever be. ("Churchill Downs" peaked at #23.)

Harlow rolled his album out in true orthodox style. He flashed his megawatt style at every camera that was pointed at him. He did interviews where he usually managed to avoid saying anything detrimental to his career, at least back then. (Earlier this year, Harlow put his foot so far into his mouth that he was shitting toes, but we'll get to that in a future column.) He lined up endorsements, then rapped about his ability to line up endorsements. Harlow did songs for soundtracks, verses on remixes, guest appearances. He burnished his bona fides by making one-off singles with street rappers like Pooh Shiesty and his fellow Louisville native EST Gee, a mutually beneficial arrangement for everyone involved. Also, from what I've been told, he was (and still is) nice to people. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any stories of Harlow being an asshole to anyone around him. That makes a difference.

Lead single "Nail Tech" came out in February 2022 to literal fanfare. The horns on the song sound like they've been expensively sampled from some old record, but no, they're brand new, especially recorded for Harlow. The song itself is a perfectly decent piece of cruise-control braggadocio, casually propulsive without ever risking annoying anyone. In the video, Harlow dressed up like Steve Jobs, introducing a new vibrator to a conference room full of screaming women. "Nail Tech" was really just one more Jack Harlow song, and it didn't take him to the next level. Instead, it debuted at #18 and then slid right down the Hot 100. His next single was the big, obvious can't-miss commercial move, and that's the song that we're here to talk about today.

Harlow employed the services of a small army of producers while making Come Home The Kids Miss You, but the two who served as executive producers, and whose names are truly all over the credits, are Angel López and Rogét Chahayed. López got his start working under big names like Kanye West and Timbaland, and Chahayed has already been in this column for his work on Travis Scott's "Sicko Mode." Both of them met Harlow when he was deep into his come-up, and Harlow decided that they would be his guys. When the album came out, López told Complex that they worked on "finding something obvious that’ll connect with people instantly." To that end, Harlow sent them a playlist of 12 songs that he wanted them to try sampling. Fergie's "Glamorous" was one of those.

Nobody got their fingers dusty, literally or metaphorically, coming up with that Fergie sample. It's a clear play for the collective memory, an easy way to flash something familiar and maybe even comforting in a prospective listener's face. Polow Da Don's original "Glamorous" beat was already pretty breezy and streamlined. Harlow's various producers took that and stripped it back even further. The drum patterns are different, but they're not that different. Fergie's voice is slowed down a bit, but her hook is mostly left intact. (It drives me nuts that the sample cuts off just before the chorus resolves with the "flaw-say flaw-say" bit.) The "First Class" instrumental track is full of tiny bits of ear candy — a softly purring organ sound, a lot of tinkly pianos — but they're a little too tasteful to register in any serious way.

Largely because of that sample, "First Class" is one of those songs with way, way too many credited writers. "Glamorous" already had a squad of writers, so all of them are credited on "First Class," too. Ludacris, someone who has been in this column a bunch of times, is counted as a "First Class" co-writer even though Harlow's song has nothing to do with Luda's guest verse. That's a missed opportunity, honestly, since the weird way that Luda says "champagne wishes, caviar dreams" on "Glamorous" is way more memorable than anything Harlow does on "First Class." Raheem The Dream, the Atlanta rapper from the early '90s, gets a "First Class" writing credit for the way "Glamorous" used his "if you ain't got no money, take yo' broke ass home" chant, even though that doesn't show up on "First Class," either.

But also, "First Class" has five producers — Angel López, Rogét Chahayed, Harlow himself, Kendrick Lamar/Tate McRae collaborator Jasper Harris, and Charlie Handsome, who has already been in this column for his work on Polo G's "Rapstar" and who will return many times because he's one of Morgan Wallen's guys now. What did all these guys do? Is "First Class" really a song that needed five producers? Naturally, all five of those producers get writing credit, too. That's how a song as slight as "First Class" can end up with 13 credited writers. Maybe that's part of the reason that it ends up sounding less like a work of creative expression, more like a business meeting.

I'm glad Jack Harlow at least chose the "Glamorous" sample, anyway — that it wasn't pitched to him by some publishing executive who was trying to get some return after paying too much for some aging star's song catalog. (That kind of thing did happen and probably still does; this column will cover an egregious example soon.) As the story goes, Harlow and his collaborators weren't even sure they could get the "Glamorous" sample cleared, though I'm sure they weren't too worried. The real problem with "First Class," beyond the gallingly obvious nature of the sample, is how little Harlow does with it. Talking to Complex, Chahayed straight-up said, "The real star of that song is the sample." This is true, and it means that the real star is not Jack Harlow.

Harlow says a whole lot of nothing on "First Class." The hook takes the part of "Glamorous" where Fergie spells the word, and Harlow makes a half-hearted attempt to turn it into a call-and-response back-and-forth: "I been a G, throw up the L, sex in the AM." But then he abandons that idea, not bothering to come up with anything for the "O-R-O-U-S" part. He says that he can put you in first class up in the sky, and he lets Fergie finish that line for him. As a result, he sounds like a hypeman on his own song. With his verses, he does nothing that makes you think that he's the one who deserves the attention.

Harlow's "First Class" lyrics are full of even more wan flexes, some of them phrased pretty awkwardly: "I don't care what frat that you was in, you can't alpha me, keep dreamin'/ Pineapple juice, I give her sweet, sweet, sweet semen." (Even beyond the cluttered wording there, I really don't need to know how this guy's jizz tastes.) He's got plaques in the mail because it's peak season, and he shouts out the UPS workers making sure he receives 'em. They tell him he's a superstar now, so he says, "Damn, I guess I am." He doesn't have any downtime because he's got visions of his mom saying, "Wait, this house mine?" That's why he's on Angus Cloud nine. (Angus Cloud, the guy who played Fez on Euphoria, was still alive at the time.)

The Jack Harlow of "First Class" isn't ultimately that different from the Jack Harlow of his "Industry Baby" guest verse, but the dip in energy makes a tremendous difference. On "Industry Baby," Harlow was giddy with excitement, bursting with charm. On "First Class," he seems to make a conscious decision to turn that charm down so that it won't distract from the sample. It's a decision that I just can't understand — shrinking down and curling into a ball on the song that's supposed to turn him into a star. His two verses are awfully short, and the song is over in two and a half minutes. The whole thing feels like it exists just so that kids could make TikTok videos out of the Fergie sample on the hook. Even the video seems to pick its locations — a helicopter, an airport runway, a room full of industrial fans — because a focus group told a label exec that they like seeing Harlow's hair blow around.

Even though it's a nothing song, "First Class" did what it was supposed to do. Harlow posted clips of the single on social media before releasing it, which means kids were making TikToks of the hook before the track even officially came out. In its first week, "First Class" did huge streaming numbers and debuted at #1, knocking Harry Styles' "As It Was" out of the top spot after just one week. For a little while, Harlow and Styles traded off the #1 spot. "As It Was" ultimately had much longer legs, but "First Class" still hung around on the chart, staying on the Hot 100 for more than six months. At the VMAs later in the year, Harlow and Fergie naturally performed the song together, partly on a fake plane set full of celebrities getting their little moments of screen time. When "First Class" faded into "Glamorous" on that show, the energy picked up noticeably.

As well as "First Class" did, I don't think it actually elevated Jack Harlow to a different level of stardom. The Come Home The Kids Miss You album went platinum once, a step down from its predecessor. A handful of other songs charted, but none of them were real-deal hits. The biggest of them was "Dua Lipa," where Harlow raps that he's "tryna do more with her than do a feature." Pretty fun song! After it came out, Harlow reportedly did date Dua Lipa for a quick minute, which is a lot more impressive than the song peaking at #21.

The Jack Harlow media blitz kept going for a little while, including a detour into acting. Harlow played the Woody Harrelson role in a made-for-Hulu White Men Can't Jump remake. I didn't watch it. It looked stupid. He also had a supporting role in The Instigators, a 2024 made-for-Apple heist comedy with Matt Damon and Casey Affleck. Didn't see that one, either. Also looked stupid. Don't tease me with a partial Ocean's Eleven reunion. If you're going to do it, do it for real. Somewhere in there, Harlow also did double duty as host and musical guest on an SNL episode. I might've seen that one. Can't remember.

In any case, Harlow seemed to worry about becoming an overexposed nonentity. His next album, 2023's Jackman, is a knowingly low-stakes rappity-rap exercise, as if he wanted to remind the world that he could really spit when he wanted. It seemed designed specifically not to do numbers, and it did not do numbers. "They Don't Love It," the only single, peaked at #54.

But Jack Harlow wasn't finished making hits quite yet. He'll be back in this column again, for a song that flips a much cooler sample in a much cooler way. That one, I'm happy to say, doesn't sound like AI.

GRADE: 3/10

BONUS BEATS: This one requires a little backstory. While promoting his album in 2022, Jack Harlow went on Hot 97 and was unable to identify "Angel In Disguise," the 1999 track from Brandy, an artist who has been in this column a few times. ("Angel In Disguise" peaked at #72.) Further, Harlow showed that he didn't know much about Brandy at all. In presumably playful response to Harlow's moment of lightly viral clulessness, Brandy tweeted, "I will murk this dude in rap at 43 on his own beats and then sing his ass to sleep." She then did exactly that, freestyling quite impressively over "First Class" despite not actually being a rapper:

This was not a real beef, and Brandy performed her freestyle alongside Harlow (and also Lil Wayne) at the BET Awards soon afterward. Here's that:

The Number Ones: Twenty Chart-Topping Hits That Reveal The History Of Pop Music is out now via Hachette Books. You don't need Givenchy, you need a copy of the book.