Lil Nas X- Old Town Road

Ok, So in December 2018 a new artist called Lil Nas X comes out with the most genre-bending song of basically the past five years. It charted not only in rap and hip-hop but also the Country charts. Which, to be honest, is fair enough. He sings/raps about his horses in the back and flexes about his Gucci cowboy hat (which is the definition of weird flex but ok). Not only are the words echoing of your stereotypical country banger but so is the beat. Yes I admit, the heavy bass creates a weird trap beat, but you cannot ignore the acoustic guitar (or banjo), that repeats the same chords systematically.

So why have I written an entire blog post about it? Well, recently Billboard pulled it from the country charts. stating that it simply ‘isn’t country enough’. Ok, but why? What is it about the song that doesn’t make it country? I mean he literally is talking about horses and ‘the old town road’ whatever that is. And in my opinion, a banjo is pretty country. I mean country radio stations have been rinsing this song. They had to pull it from youtube because it hadn’t even been properly released yet. It seems like Billboard are the only people to say it isn’t country enough. I feel as though they don’t believe the genres of Hip-Hop and Country can cross over, but that’s what makes the song such a success. No one has ever heard anything like this, and it’s new and refreshing.

Luckily, Billy Ray Cyrus, who claimed he had experienced similar things when he first started his career, decided to join Lil Nas X on the song, as the first official remix. If Billboard doesn’t see that as Country, then really what is it? Billboard has made the boundary’s on music too tight and doing that is only going to ruin artists’ creative flow. We are never going to hear such boundary-breaking music again if artists are afraid of being pulled from the charts.

I love this song and I love it more for the fact that it’s paving the way for creativity within the music industry.

Sope

#review #charts #genre #Country #Controversy #music #oldtownroad #favouritesongs #Billboard #opinion #Rap #LilNasX #HipHop