When Eminem first appeared on the mainstream radar in 1999, his music seemed groundbreaking and fresh. Unfortunately, over the past two decades, the public perception of the self-proclaimed “Rap God” has changed as tastes in hip-hop have evolved. Now, he’s seen as something of an anachronism, a man out of time like Captain America in the Marvel Comics universe. Well, Jack Harlow, one of Eminem’s biggest fans, won’t stand for it anymore. In a new interview with Rolling Stone, the “Nail Tech” rapper calls it “tragic” that his hero — with whom he collaborated on a remix of “Killer” last year — isn’t appreciated.
However, he remains optimistic that the pendulum will eventually swing the other way. “I think that sh*t is still forever immortal, and we’re gonna get back to it,” he says. “We’re a couple years away from everyone reviving that shit as a culture and being like, ‘Look at this sh*t.’ And everyone’s gonna pay their rightful respects again. No matter how the production ages to people, like, he put so much into his words that it immortalized him, even though that sh*t aged as ‘circus music’ to [some] people.”
The older rapper could probably help things along by, like, picking better beats and changing his flow, but point taken. Meanwhile, Harlow has more or less replaced Eminem as hip-hop’s favorite white boy (unless we’re counting Post Malone, whose status as a hip-hop artist remains a point of contention). He recently released the single “First Class” as the precursor to his upcoming second studio album, Come Home The Kids Miss You, and he’s been cast in a remake of White Men Can’t Jump. He talks about both in the full Rolling Stone interview, which you can read here.