Cover Story
Video
Articles
Newsletters
Members Club
Members Club

About Boardroom

Boardroom is a sports, media and entertainment brand co-founded by Kevin Durant and Rich Kleiman and focused on the intersection of sports and entertainment. Boardroom’s flagship media arm features premium video/audio, editorial, daily and weekly newsletters, showcasing how athletes, executives, musicians and creators are moving the business world forward. Boardroom’s ecosystem encompasses B2B events and experiences (such as its renowned NBA and WNBA All-Star events) as well as ticketed conferences such as Game Plan in partnership with CNBC. Our advisory arm serves to consult and connect athletes, brands and executives with our broader network and initiatives.

Recent film and TV projects also under the Boardroom umbrella include the Academy Award-winning Two Distant Strangers (Netflix), the critically acclaimed scripted series SWAGGER (Apple TV+) and Emmy-nominated documentary NYC Point Gods (Showtime).

Boardroom’s sister company, Boardroom Sports Holdings, features investments in emerging sports teams and leagues, including the Major League Pickleball team, the Brooklyn Aces, NWSL champions Gotham FC, and MLS’ Philadelphia Union.

All Rights Reserved. 2026.
Music March 20, 2026
Will Schube
Will Schube

Jack Harlow’s Hubris Overshadowed His Most Interesting Album

Photo courtesy of Atlantic Records
Jokes and memes aside, Harlow’s fourth album, Monica, is worth a listen.

Stripped of all context, racial, commercial, and cultural, it’s pretty staggering that Jack Harlow was allowed to release a nine-song ode to early 2000s R&B and the Soulquarians on a major label. It’s a MadLibs of the modern music industry, the sort of plotline more suited for Lil Dicky’s Dave than reality. I would have paid to be a fly on the wall in the Atlantic boardroom while Harlow and his team tried to convince DJ Drama and the label hire-ups why Monica was a good idea. For all intents and purposes, it wasn’t. 

The album is projected to move less than 26.5 thousand units in its first week, and is expected to land outside of the top 20 on the Billboard 200. The only noise it’s making culturally is for the missteps that have occurred along the way. Jackman, Harlow’s last LP, debuted at number eight. Somewhere in the 20-30 range is respectable, sure, but surely Atlantic and Harlow’s team were expecting a bigger return for his first album since 2023. All that aside, the most perplexing thing about Monica is that it’s not…terrible. 

Stay Ahead of the Game, Get Our Newsletters

Subscribe for the biggest stories in the business of sports and entertainment, daily.

Harlow has surrounded himself with musicians who know what they’re doing. Aksel Arvid, a Norwegian producer best known for his work with PinkPantheress, handles the majority of the production work on Monica. Elsewhere, Hollywood Cole, an Atlanta native who came up under DJ Drama and Don Cannon, brings the warm stylings of early 2000s Philly soul to songs like the blithe “All of My Friends” and “Living Alone.” If this music was performed by someone with a more dynamic singing voice, it might actually be genuinely good. Even so, if you perform the dangerous duty of listening to this music in a hermetically sealed sterile environment, you might leave saying, ‘Hmm. Not bad.’ As Peter Berry’s Stereogum headline reads: “Monica Is Jack Harlow’s Identity Crisis. It’s Also His Best Album.” Unfortunately for Harlow, music isn’t consumed in a Dyson. His words have impact, and the words he’s spilled surrounding the album have been quite poorly thought out. 

In an interview with The New York Times’ Popcast on March 13, Harlow spoke with the show’s two hosts (both white, it should be noted) about how a majority of white rappers eventually seem to gravitate towards country music. Think about someone like Post Malone, who uses the framing of Black culture and rap to become enormously popular, only to turn around and say, “If you’re looking for lyrics, if you’re looking to cry, if you’re looking to think about life, don’t listen to hip-hop.” 

To Harlow’s credit — if credit is even the right word for clearing this remarkably low bar — he’s delved further into subgenres firmly tied to the Black American experience. Regrettably, he was quick to point this out on Popcast. “I got Blacker,” he explained. The hosts, for what it’s worth, did little to push back on this shocking statement. He went on to reveal that he was well aware of where most white rappers land: “I’m hyper-aware of the politics of today, that safer landing spot that a lot of my white contemporaries have found.”

The staggering part of this statement is that Harlow considers himself hyper-self-aware, but not self-aware enough to avoid saying something like “I got Blacker.” There was clearly a way to present this album in a way that was nuanced, insightful, and paid proper appreciation to the culture from which it rose. Instead, Harlow talked to two white dudes about how he’s basically Black because he made an R&B record.

As Charlamagne tha God expressed on an episode of The Breakfast Club earlier this week: “Let me tell you something. I like Jack Harlow. I’ve met Jack Harlow. We’ve interviewed Jack Harlow. Jack is a nice guy. But I told y’all on Friday [3/13] that this album made him whiter. And saying the music made you Blacker is exactly why I said this album made him whiter.”

Charlemagne nails it here. There’s a way to present this music, from this songwriter, and have it both exist within the space that Harlow has already built and continue expanding to new, more diverse audiences. With a project as unexpectedly unique as Monica, there seemed to have been a genuine opportunity to leverage its standout qualities into something that made Harlow an early star of 2026. Instead, most of the conversation surrounding Monica has to do with memes and his cringe-worthy commentary. Part of this is due to the music being lackluster, but plenty of superstars have found more success with worth. Jack Harlow had an opportunity to turn this pivot into a level-up. Instead, it’s going to take something even more unpredictable to right this mess. 

Read More:

Will Schube