Sophia Michaels
Jack Harlow’s rehearsals for the upcoming remake of White Men Can’t Jump paid off during his recent co-hosting appearance on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon. During a round of random object shootout, the rapper beat out the veteran host 7-0 in a messy game that included tossing a cornucopia full of eyeballs, a vase filled to the brim with applesauce, and a Mike Myers Halloween mask through a basketball hoop.
During the final round, Fallon passed his turn off to Dwyane Wade, whose win could have brought the score up to a less embarrassing loss of 7-5. But even the three-time NBA champion couldn’t land the shot. Teetering on starstruck, Harlow’s sole reaction to the close-call basket before he sat down to help Fallon interview Wade as the night’s guest was: “I’m wet.”
Harlow was the star of the show for much of the night. During a sit-down with Fallon, the Kentucky native recounted his first late-night appearance, thanking the host for taking a chance on him way back in 2020 before his breakthrough single “What’s Poppin” became a Grammy Award-nominated hit.
“I feel like a lot of artists, when their song finally is in super rotation on the radio, then it’s like, ‘Okay, let’s get him up here,’” Harlow said. “You were, to me, a tastemaker in that moment. You were really early on that, so thank you for having me.”
His gratitude showed through when he recruited Fallon as one of his airplane passengers during a recent performance of “First Class” at the MTV Video Music Awards. The night also saw the rapper bring the song’s guiding inspiration Fergie to a roaring crowd. During the Tonight Show, Harlow revealed the backstory behind the full-circle moment of sampling “Fergalicious” on the track and having her join him to perform, recalling a time he was barred from performing the original 2006 hit in an elementary school talent show.
“When I was in fifth grade, I tried to do ‘Fergalicious,’ and, you know, the lyrics are suggestive, I guess,” he explained. “To me, it wasn’t anything. But I didn’t even get to finish the audition. I was halfway through and they cut me off. They’re like, ‘You can’t do that.’ So that’s my rapper origin story.”
