The Untold Truth Of Old Town Road

If you've encountered a suspiciously large number of people lately talking about "horses in the back," chances are you've encountered fans of "Old Town Road" by Lil Nas X. The viral hit song and its Red Dead Redemption 2 themed music video emerged in December 2018, and its catchy mashup of trap music and country has taken the internet by storm while propelling the song's young creator to fame.

Whether you love the song dearly or hate it with the fullness of your heart, it's hard to deny that it's a perfect example of the current unpredictability of the music business. After all, at what other point in history could a virtual unknown get as much attention with a single unassuming song that wasn't even published the traditional way?

Even so, you might not have realized that the full story behind the song is even stranger than it first appears to be. Here's the down-low on "Old Town Road."

When the genre-busting "Old Town Road" debuted at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart (and also placed on the genre-blind Hot 100), it was easy to predict that the song would ruffle a few feathers. And some of those feathers belonged to Billboard itself. Rolling Stone reports that the chartkeepers stealthily removed "Old Town Road" from the Hot Country Songs list soon after it first charted, and they told Lil Nas X's label, Columbia Records, that the song's inclusion was a mistake in the first place.

Initially, Billboard tried to keep the removal low-key, but Rolling Stone managed to get a statement that included these lines: "When determining genres, a few factors are examined, but first and foremost is musical composition. While 'Old Town Road' incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today's country music to chart in its current version." Billboard later clarified its position by saying the specific grounds for the song's country chart disqualification were its trap beat, lack of country airplay, categorization issues and, oddly, "no involvement by Sony Music Nashville." They also said that further chart adjustments are possible.

To put the massive success of "Old Town Road" in context, consider this: In April 2019, Lil Nas X's song was streamed more than 143 million times in a single week. Apart from making the track a runaway success, this absurd figure also broke a pretty significant record that was formerly held by none other than Drake. CNN reports that the Canadian rapper had held the record for most streams per week with his 2018 hit track "In My Feelings." But the 116.2 million streams for that song paled in comparison to "Old Town Road," which crushed it by almost 27 million streams. Pitchfork goes on to note that the version of "Old Town Road" that broke the record was specifically the Billy Ray Cyrus remix which, in a way, was also a record: It gave Cyrus the first No. 1 hit single of his career.

Lil Nas X celebrated the event in the only way such an unbelievable thing could be celebrated, really: By freaking out on Instagram.

Lil Nas X fully admits that he aimed for "Old Town Road" to go viral, and that it wasn't even his first try. In an interview with Rolling Stone, he says his previous attempts included Facebook comedy videos, Instagram influencing and, eventually, Twitter. For him, third time was the charm: "That is where I really was a master. That was the first place where I could go viral."

Eventually, he decided to jump into music, but the banjo-filled song-rap of "Old Town Road" didn't immediately come to him. First he tried to take a more typical musical road that resulted in "middle-of-the-road Soundcloud rap." Even when Lil Nas X ultimately landed on his now-famous country trap tune, it was far from an overnight sensation. As Stereogum describes, the artist embarked on a tireless social media promotion cycle to turn his song into a meme, and ultimately lucked out on the video app TikTok where a snippet of the song became connected to the viral Yee Haw transformation challenge. (Think "Harlem Shake," but with cowboys.) As it turns out, a bunch of teens constantly hammering a song into each others' heads as a meme is a pretty effective way to make a song successful.

Much has been made about Billboard dropping "Old Town Road" from its Hot Country Songs chart, but they didn't exactly scrub the song from their rolls. Lil Nas X was still free to dominate a number of other Billboard charts, which he certainly must have been pleased about. On April 8, 2019, "Old Town Road" was No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, as well as the Streaming Songs chart, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, and Hot Rap Songs chart. The Billy Ray Cyrus version of the song has continued to dominate the Hot 100 for several weeks, and may do so for a while yet. The song was so unstoppable that it even made it back on the country charts, at least in a fashion. As Taste of Country notes, "Old Town Road" debuted at No. 53 on the Country Airplay chart on the week of April 13, mere weeks after Billboard deemed it "not country."

The song's runaway success has made Lil Nas X one of the fastest new artists to make the top of the Hot 100 list, which puts him in the prestigious company of people like Bradley Cooper (for "Shallow," naturally) and ... uh, whoever made the "Harlem Shake" song.

As Paper points out, it says something about country music that Lil Nas X was bluntly removed from the country charts, but when the Billy Ray Cyrus remix of "Old Country Road" reached No. 1, a sign congratulating Cyrus (and Cyrus alone) was erected on Music Row in Nashville. Though this particular sign was probably bought by Cyrus' own label or publisher, it's still a celebration of a white man singing the same hit that was ostracized for not being country when it was performed by an African American man. Was the rejection just a musical matter, or is there an underlying racial element?

According to NBC News, the "Old Country Road" incident is forcing country music (and, for that matter, Billboard) to face its murky past. Influential black country artists like Arthur Alexander and O.B. McClinton have historically never charted very well and have struggled to get airplay on country radio, and historian Patrick Huber says the country genre has a strong historical tendency to downplay and ignore its significant African American influences. Meanwhile, Billboard has been defining what should and shouldn't be "country" since the days it was still called "hillbilly music" and featured tons of artists with a history of performing in blackface. With "Old Country Road," Lil Nas X makes the industry review its rotten roots and, hopefully, work toward a more inclusive future.

Lil Nas X might sound like a supergroup consisting of Lil Wayne, Nas, and DMX, but Montero Lamar Hill actually took the name from the same place that made him a star: the internet. In an interview with Rolling Stone, Hill says he first used "Nas" as his internet alias, and decided to add "Lil" because he found it funny that so many rappers use that particular prefix. As he built his online fanbase, he was pretty much stuck with the name but couldn't resist tinkering with it one last time when he added the X, which he says is a representation of the ten years he estimated it would take before he's at a "legendary level."

Despite the fact that his stage name comes from a relatively innocent place (insofar as the internet can be called that), Hill still fully recognizes its debt to the rap great Nas, whom he says he considers a legend. In fact, XXL reports that Hill has considered changing his artist name because he doesn't want to disrespect Nas.