Jack Harlow says there are people in his life who tried to talk him out of collaborating with openly gay rapper Lil Nas X on “Industry Baby.”
“I had people in my corner that didn’t recommend I do that song, that don’t want to watch that video,” the 23-year-old rapper told British GQ. “But I just realize there is a fundamental difference with how the world is seen by some people. Some people think certain things are wrong. There are some people, at the root level – although they don’t want to hurt any gays; they don’t hate gays – they think it is wrong, whether it’s religion or whatever reason it is.
“But for me, I have never been this way. Never.”
Harlow said he grew up “with a world perspective” because he lived in “an eclectic neighbourhood” in Louisville, Kentucky and attended a high school with “a really big LGBTQ community.”
As for Harlow’s own personal life, he revealed he is currently single but hasn’t been capitalizing on his fame. “You close up a little as the stakes are higher. So a girl I would have invited back to my hotel three years ago, I wouldn't do it now,” he explained. “There’s also a stigma around it … Now I have no interest in that.”
Like most celebrities, Harlow insists women sign a non-disclosure agreement. “That’s solely to establish the idea that, ‘Hey, my texts aren’t meant for your friends.’ Our time together is for us,” he said.
“And I present it, like, ‘Hey, listen, if you don’t want to sign this you don’t have to. This is a unique situation. And if you don’t want to do it that’s totally fine, but this is what needs to happen for us to be able to hang out. I just want us to hang out; I don’t want this to be a thing on the internet.’”
Elsewhere in the interview, Harlow opened up about early influences like Canada’s own Drake (“I saw myself in him. He made it OK not to be that clichéd tough guy persona”) and his thoughts on Drake’s rival Ye (“I think he sees himself as Mozart or Beethoven. I think he’s worried, not about what it looks like now but what it will look like in 100 years”).