Breakout Kentucky rap star Jack Harlow got to live his dream by appearing on this week’s season premiere Complex‘s Hot Ones, but his dream turned out to be more of a nightmare after his saucy fingers got a little too familiar with his right eye halfway through the episode. He spends quite a bit of the interview suffering, but before that, he got in a few really fun responses to questions about lyrics from his debut album, That’s What They All Say.
Host Sean Evans references the reflective song “Rendezvous,” on which Harlow rhymes about being “Eight deep at the show, it might be eight fans,” and asks Jack about his most “character-building” experiences on tour. Jack recalls the tour for his 2017 mixtape Gazebo where, “night after night, I was getting character builders.” He describes situations where he had as many people on stage as there were in the crowd. “One that stuck out was the first night of the tour, which really set my expectations. It was Birmingham, Alabama. There was as many people in the crowd as we had come to the venue with… I had some humbling shows, but they prepared me for this.” He also talks a bit about doing his own stunts in a Call Of Duty ad.
He’s certainly seen a turnaround in his fortunes since. In the same month that he released his debut album on Atlantic, he appeared on The Tonight Show, Saturday Night Live, and in an NBA All-Star Weekend game of two-on-two, bringing his audience from “eight fans” to millions in just three years.
Jack Harlow is a Warner Music artist. Uproxx is an independent subsidiary of Warner Music Group.