Lil Nas X, Country Music’s Renegade Rapper

Old Town Road spent 19 weeks atop the Billboard Hot 100, the longest a song has held that spot in the chart’s 61-year history.

(Bloomberg Businessweek) -- Last year, Montero Lamar Hill was living at his sister’s house after dropping out of the University of West Georgia. He was 19. His dad was paying his phone bill. His plan was to become internet famous. Under the nom de plume Lil Nas X, he recorded a twangy melody over a trap-style hip-hop beat and laid down some rap boasts drenched in country imagery. He put the track on SoundCloud, recorded a video for the social media app TikTok, and soon saw the song land on Billboard’s Hot Country and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop charts.

In March, after Columbia Records signed Hill, Billboard removed Old Town Road from the country chart, saying it wasn’t authentic to the genre. Hill’s fans protested. Buoyed by the controversy, the song hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100 in April and stayed there until August. (In June he released an EP, 7.) Hill remixed an even ­twangier version with the formerly mulleted Billy Ray Cyrus—perhaps as logical a capstone to a genre-­confounding, out-of-nowhere, internet-era origin narrative as any. 

©2019 Bloomberg L.P.

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