In a new feature on Jack Harlow for Billboard, Jack Harlow says he consistently turned down pop crossover bids until working with Lil Nas X on “Industry Baby.” There were a couple of reasons for that: he didn’t want to be seen as a “novelty act,” and he feels he needs to respect rap as a genre and hip-hop as a culture.

“There is a certain reality that I am white, and I think there will always be something attached to that,” he said. “No matter how embraced I am, there will never be a day that I’m Black. With that being said, there’s a certain responsibility that comes with being a white man in a Black genre, and there’s certain things that have me regarded differently. But there is something exciting about skipping over any barriers that might be there and creating unity.”

When it comes to “Industry Baby”, it was actually Jack who reached out to Lil Nas X to work on it, according to Take A Daytrip’s Denzel Baptiste. “What impressed me the most about Jack’s verse was that before we did it, he reached out directly and let Nas know he wanted to work,” he said. “When we got the verse back, it was this super-long idea. It wouldn’t normally fit a pop-song structure, but there were so many amazing moments in it. We produced around it in a way that made it a huge focal point of the song.”

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