Last Friday, I went to my first concert since March of 2020. Jack Harlow was performing at the House of Blues in New Orleans, and I knew I wanted to see him.
I first heard of Harlow in 2018, vibing to his album “Loose” with my friend after our shift at the call center on campus. Since then, I’ve been hoping he would blow up and in 2020 he did just that.
For months last year all you could hear was his smash hit “What’s Poppin”. It was doing so well that he made a remix with other notable artists like Lil Wayne. Since then things have only been going up for Harlow.
As soon as I heard he was going on tour, I knew I had to go. I’d been missing out on live concerts for over a year and figured this being his first big tour I was in for a treat. I was 100% right.
Harlow’s energy from start to finish was something I have not seen at a concert in a long time. There were no fancy outfit changes or pyro, but his stage presence was still commanding. You could tell he was up there having fun the whole time just like the crowd was.
There were about 800 people there and more than half of them were rapping along with every word of his songs, myself included. Harlow seemed to feed off that, letting the crowd do some verses on their own. I’ve been in the “pit” before for a concert, but it was definitely one of the loudest concerts I’ve been to.
He performed for an hour straight, barely taking any breaks besides drinking water. Even better was the fact that Harlow was live, with no autotune. He was just connecting with the crowd— both with his songs and monologue.
And by monologue, I mean there are often times when you can tell the artist has a set of things they’ll always say during the concert to get a reaction from the crowd. For example, “This is the best crowd I’ve had all tour.” Something like that is probably repeated by the artist at every stop, but with Harlow, you could tell he was genuine with his words.
He told the crowd he would be back soon and playing at the Smoothie King Center one day. He thanked his tour manager who is from New Orleans. And right before playing “What’s Poppin” as the closing song, he gave one more speech. “I want to show the world how much they’re sleeping on New Orleans, so I’m gonna ask one more time before we do this. New Orleans, are you ready?” Harlow asked.
He made a good point, because a lot of times tours skip over New Orleans for some reason. I’m not sure why, but I’m glad Harlow liked our energy and will come back to the city in the future.
For anyone sleeping on Jack Harlow, I recommend seeing him live. It was one of the most lively concerts I’ve ever been to, and this is coming from someone who went to nine concerts in 2019 alone. I can’t wait to see him again and other artists live in concert in the future.