Jack Harlow, Bob Dylan have Lexington-area concerts this weekend. Are they sold-out?

You likely won’t need Sherlock Holmes’ powers of deduction to solve this query, but see if you can tell which artist — Bob Dylan or Jack Harlow — penned these lyrics.

▪ “What’s good is bad, what’s bad is good. You’ll find out when you reach the top that you’re on the bottom.”

▪ “They just know I got the flows and the hoes and the packed out shows. Ain’t too many cons when you playin’ with the pros, ’cept for how your life gets exposed.”

Two wordsmiths representing not only separate generations, but schools of pop culture lyricism seemingly constructed in different universes. This weekend, though, they converge in Kentucky one night apart in two cities and the shows are not sold out and tickets are available.

At Eastern Kentucky University in Richmond on Dec. 2, it’s the return of Bob Dylan, 83. A talisman for the ’60s folk movement’s party crashing progression into rock ‘n’ roll and a wildly creative, if somewhat artistically oblique, musical force ever since.

At Rupp Arena here in Lexington on Dec. 3, we have the latest Louisville export to create a national platform for his music and, in the process, sell quite a few million records. His name is Jack Harlow and, at age 25, he is one of the most popular and bankable rap artists in the world.

Similarities? On the surface, there are none. For many Dylan die-hards, a comparison between any era of the master songwriter’s work and any chapter or channel of hip-hop’s comparatively brief history may seem like poetic heresy. Similarly, one might assume there are those within Harlow’s fanbase that see Dylan as being purely archaic — a relic whose relevance evaporated from their worlds of rhyme before they were born.

Still, here they are this weekend — two leading artists in the art of wordplay, performers that convey their sagas not through narratives that are always accessible, but through a lexicon that represents their respective artistic worlds. Do these artists share more in common than their respective camps might think? For both, their music is really a subterfuge of sorts for puzzles of words and rhymes.

For Dylan, of course, all roads lead to folk — specifically to musical storytellers like Woody Guthrie rooted in the social restlessness of what were simultaneously post-war and war eras. But rock ‘n’ roll was always part of the game. Dylan may have cut his artistic teeth in the early ’60s folk clubs around Greenwich Village, but he was singing Little Richard covers as far back as high school.

The beauty of Dylan’s music through the years was that he has seldom been obvious in his sense of storytelling. Sure, there were numerous songs that spoke bluntly to the political climate of the early ’60s (“Master of War”) just as there were love songs of elegiac beauty (“Girl from the North Country.”) There were also works that were less direct. They were just as open in terms of sentiment as his obvious songs, but presented playgrounds vast enough for listeners to inject their own interpretations. These tunes opened up in ways that great poems did, to where the subject matter seemed either universal in appeal or, if the mood was placed properly, personal to the point of intimacy.

Brilliant cases in point: “Queen Jane Approximately” and “I Want You” from the 1960s, “Not Dark Yet” from the late 1990s and the epic 17-minute “Murder Most Foul” that concludes Dylan’s most recent album, 2020’s “Rough and Rowdy Ways.”

Ironically, “Rough and Rowdy Ways” was released only six months before “Thats What They All Say,” Harlow’s debut album, appeared. Invested in Southern hip-hop and R&B inspirations, the record was an immediate hit by debuting at No. 5 on the all-genre Billboard 200 chart. Having two major singles —“Whats Poppin” and “Tyler Herro” — earlier in 2020 helped with introductions, though.

A second album, “Come Home the Kids Miss You,” surfaced in May 2022. It sported collaborations with a number of major league names (Justin Timberlake, Pharrell Williams, Lil Wayne) as well as a teaming with the artist Harlow is regularly compared to, Drake. The latter track in question is “Churchill Downs,” a largely autobiographical piece inspired by Harlow’s meteoric ascent to stardom. Its accompanying music video serves as a travelogue through his home state, from the Louisville Slugger factory to the Kentucky State Fair to a suit-and-tie Harlow strolling with the high roller set at the famed track the tune is named for.

Harlow’s currency is his youth. Dylan’s is his history. But let’s look at this from a kind of joint perspective. When Dylan was the age Harlow is now, he had just released “Blonde on Blonde,” a 1966 double-album opus that stands as perhaps his greatest work. That’s enough to make one wonder what level of staying power Harlow’s career will enjoy, especially within a genre constantly bombarded by new artists.

For now, though, Harlow is on solid ground. He issued his third album, “Jackman,” without any advance promotion in April and joined Gov. Andy Beshear during a campaign stop at the University of Louisville less than a week before Election Day. Harlow also wound up on televisions everywhere on Thanksgiving Day performing at halftime during the NFL broadcast of the Detroit Lions/Green Bay Packers game.

The latter earned Harlow considerable online ribbing. In his For the Win column, picked up last week by USA Today as well as the rapper’s hometown newspaper, the Courier-Journal, Robert Zeglinski did not sugar coat his reaction.

“Amidst a holiday centered around eating and sleepiness before the evening, Harlow ‘serenaded’ America with one of the weirdest, seemingly low-budget performances I can remember in Thanksgiving NFL history. It was legitimately baffling seeing the rapper ... spout off low-energy verses amidst set pieces that looked like they were ripped straight out of a middle school play.”

Harlow has weathered criticism before (the national online music publication Pitchfork dismissed “Come Home the Kids Miss You” last year as “among the most insipid, vacuous statements in recent pop history”). But none of it has dug in enough to mute his popularity, especially in Kentucky. In fact, the entirety of Harlow’s current week-long “No Place Like Home 2023” tour consists only of six shows over two weekends, all of which will be in Kentucky. His Rupp debut on Dec. 3 will be the tour’s final stop.

In keeping with Harlow’s considerable philanthropic work, the non-profit Jack Harlow Foundation is setting up different holiday drives at each stop on the “No Place Like Home 2023” tour. The foundation is asking for contributions of children’s pajamas at the Rupp concert.

Such giving sentiments, frankly, are worthy of a song, one that expresses good fortune as a commodity to be shared. A song, for instance, that goes like this:

“May God bless and keep you always.

May your wishes all come true.

May you always do for others,

And let others do for you.”

The song is titled “Forever Young.” It was written in 1973 by Bob Dylan.

Bob Dylan: “Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour”

When: Dec. 2 7:30 p.m.

Where: EKU Center for the Arts, 822 Hall Drive in Richmond.

Tickets: $64-$139.50 at ekucenter.com and etix.com.

Jack Harlow: “No Place Like Home 2023”

When: Dec. 3 7:30 p.m.

Where: Rupp Arena, 430 W. Vine in Lexington.

Tickets: $39.50-$197.50 at rupparena.com and ticketmaster.com.