Jack Harlow released his fourth studio album Monica today, March 13, 2026, which also happens to be his 28th birthday.
If you were expecting the same Louisville rapper who topped the Billboard Hot 100 with First Class and Lovin On Me, you are in for a genuine surprise.
Monica is not a rap album. It is a soul record, an intimate nine-track statement from an artist who has spent the last three years quietly reinventing himself in New York City, and it may be the most unexpected turn of his career.
“I’m trying to transcend,” Harlow told Apple Music in March 2025. “I want to do something I’ve never done, and I’m just slowly starting to accept that it is going to take me longer than any of my past projects if I want it to be like nothing I’ve ever done.”
Monica sounds like nothing he has ever done.
What Is Harlow’s New Sound?
Variety’s review describes Monica as channeling the spirit of D’Angelo’s classic Voodoo, warm, soulful, groove-driven, and deeply personal. Harlow steps away from rap almost entirely on this record, leaning into what Apple Music’s editorial describes as “moody soul grooves devoted to love and its many complications.”
The once-boyish chart machine emerges here as a sultry R&B crooner, and by most early critical accounts, it works.
The shift was no accident. After the success of Jackman in 2023, a critically acclaimed rap album that debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200 and hit No. 1 on the Top Rap Albums chart, Harlow uprooted his life entirely. He left Louisville, Kentucky, moved to New York City, and began recording at Electric Lady Studios in Greenwich Village.
Electric Lady Studios is the legendary studio built by Jimi Hendrix in 1970 and the same room where artists including Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, and D’Angelo have recorded iconic work.
The Tracklist
Monica runs nine tracks and opens with Trade Places before closing with Say Hello. The full tracklist is:
- Trade Places
- Lonesome
- Prague
- My Winter
- Move Along
- All Of My Friends
- Living Alone
- Against The Grain
- Say Hello
The track titles alone signal the tonal shift, introspective, solitary, searching. No song on this album is called anything that sounds like a radio smash. That is deliberate.
Who Produced Jack Harlow’s New Album?
The producer list reflects the soulful ambition of the project. Aksel Arvid, who produced PinkPantheress’s Fancy That, contributes alongside Jermaine Paul, who has worked with Brandy and Alicia Keys, and Hollywood Cole, whose credits include Lil Wayne, Drake, and 21 Savage.
Clay Harlow and Angel “BabeTruth” Lopez, whose résumé spans Mariah Carey, Coldplay, Dua Lipa, and Justin Bieber, also appear.
Jazz pianist and three-time Grammy winner Robert Glasper appears on the album. So does Ravyn Lenae, the Chicago R&B artist whose 2022 album Hypnos drew widespread critical acclaim.
Omar Apollo, the Indie-R&B artist from Indiana who has built a devoted following for his emotional, genre-blurring music, also guests.
Rounding out the features is James Savage, a rising R&B artist from Harlow’s hometown of Louisville.
Who Is Jack Harlow?
Jack Harlow, born March 13, 1998 in Louisville, Kentucky, became one of the most commercially dominant rappers of the early 2020s.
His 2020 breakout single Whats Poppin peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and last year became his first Diamond-certified record, recognition for shifting 10 million combined units in the United States.
He topped the Hot 100 three times: with First Class for three weeks in 2022, Lovin On Me for six weeks in 2023, and his Lil Nas X collaboration Industry Baby for one week in 2021.
His total global streams now sit at 32.4 billion. Lovin On Me recently became his first solo song to reach a billion streams on Spotify, joining Industry Baby and 3D in the platform’s Billions Club.
By the time Jackman arrived in 2023, Harlow had already started signaling a change in direction.
That album was critically his best, Clash Magazine called it “literate, experimental, and emphatically rebellious.”
Monica takes that evolution several steps further, abandoning rap almost entirely in favor of something quieter, warmer, and considerably more vulnerable.
Why Did Harlow Name His Album Monica?
Harlow has not given a definitive public explanation for the album title. The name has generated considerable discussion among fans since the announcement.
What the album title does is signal a personal investment that his earlier, more bravado-driven work rarely attempted.
For an artist whose biggest hits were largely about being famous, successful, and desired, an album named after a person, not a concept, not a flex, just a name, is itself a statement.
Monica is out now on all streaming platforms via Warner Music.
