“Pop culture moves at light speed and its past is littered with one-hit wonders who were convinced, at least for a brief moment, that they ruled the world.”
- Andrew Chow in TIME Magazine’s profile on Lil Nas X, 2019
Like many others, I did not take Lil Nas X seriously when I first heard Old Town Road in March 2019. My almost-Gen-Z friend sent me the song via Instagram, where the YouTube link was titled Old Town Road (Lyrics) Tik Tok Song and my verbatim response was “ 😐😑”.
Little did I know, this song was about to blow up.
Most people, having scrolled through an abundance of memes, are familiar with the success of the single from an anecdotal standpoint — but to translate that into numbers: If you combined Old Town Road and its remixes, they would collectively have 1.5 billion streams, which is more than Drake’s God’s Plan. It was the longest charting song in the entire history of the Billboard Hot 100, beating out heavyweights like Mariah Carey and Justin Bieber. Lil Nas X and Old Town Road are, simply put, undeniable.
The argument I’ll present here is that not only was Lil Nas X undeniable, but also that, looking at social forces, he was inevitable.
1. The Attention Deficit Economy
As cultural focus shifts from Millennials to Gen Z, the expectation of the immediately delivered, perfect-for-Instagram punchline is rapidly growing. The response to this force is appearing throughout music — especially in hip hop, which has traditionally embraced new phenomena in pop culture (such as the internet, streaming, social media), faster than any other genre. For example, in Netflix’s rap reality show Rhythm and Flow, Cardi B consistently judges contestants on whether she’s bullish about their potential popularity in social media.
Lil Nas X is keenly aware of our ever-shortening attention span and threads that awareness through all his projects. In his Rolling Stone profile, he mentioned that Old Town Road was literally created to engineer virality. “I gotta make it short, I gotta make it catchy, I gotta have quotable lines that people want to use as captions,” he says.*
It isn’t surprising, then, that Old Town Road got its initial boost of popularity through TikTok. Lil Nas X initially promoted his song through hundreds of self-created memes through Twitter and Instagram, but found that TikTok was the sweet spot to promote something that was funny, snippet-prone, and just a little absurd.
He also took this idea to his larger projects — in his debut EP, 7, none of his songs are over 3 minutes.** It’s as if his EP is the music equivalent of tapping through Instagram stories — the millisecond you understand the motive behind the content, it’s on to the next piece.
2. Hip hop and Homosexuality
While hip hop is quick to adopt most cultural trends, one area where there has been slower progress is acceptance of homosexuality. The history of hip hop is intimately intertwined with the idea of machismo and manhood, especially apparent in the rise and long-time dominance of gangsta rap. Given the macro-factors that forged hip hop’s identity, it might be understandable why the genre held on for so long.
But the cracks are showing. The Los Angeles Times stated that before the success of Old Town Road, hip hop was already reaching a “turning point in its inclusivity”. It started with Frank Ocean hinting about his homosexuality in 2012, with Tyler, the Creator following in 2017. There was public backlash against Migos for homophobic comments about iLoveMakonnen. Rappers such as T.i. and 50 Cent (a stalwart of the gangsta rap genre) have shifted their tune to being more accepting of homosexuality.
The waves of opinion are twisting in another direction, and when that happens, the public — in art, in politics, and in technology — craves disruption. Hip hop is no exception. Lil Nas X, with his unequivocal gayness, is the most mainstream hip hop artist yet to represent that disruption.
3. Genre Chimera
In my previous article, I wrote about how Drake fluidly moves between different types of non-rap genres. He uses those genres as a vehicle to take advantage of popular music trends such as dancehall, grime, and bounce. This strategy has worked really well for Drake, and it also works really well for Lil Nas X.
Many people are familiar with Lil Nas X’s foray into Country (and the ensuing controversy), but less are familiar with his experimentation with grunge and rock. One can hear this in Lil Nas X’s followup single, Panini and another song on his album, F9mily.
Panini contains a chorus that’s very reminiscent of a grunge song: flat, almost slurred vocals tinged with angst and lyricism that recall the feeling of “what more do you want from me?” In the late 90s, grunge emerged as a response to the rage, frustration, and subsequent nihilism with the social climate. Even though Lil Nas X didn’t realize he was being influenced by the genre at first,*** it’s not a large jump in logic to say that he was illustrating these same pressures that are resurfacing with today’s political environment.
F9mily steers even more strongly into the rock genre, with Lil Nas X collaborating with well-known drummer Travis Barker. The song has zero rapping, and almost sounds like a pop-punk song — complete with a catchy guitar riff, an air of nostalgia that oddly evokes Ocean Avenue by Yellowcard, and a jumpy chorus that would not be out of place at Warped Tour.
Safe to say, Lil Nas X is not your typical rapper. In fact, he may not be a rapper at all. This year, Lil Nas X got 6 Grammy nominations — out of those six, the majority were genre-agnostic (music video, album, new artist, and record), one was in the pop category, and only one was for rap. In my opinion, I don’t think his single in the rap category, Panini, should have been there. The Academy just wasn’t sure where else to put it.
4. Will He Last?
In summary, it’s crazy that this many cultural threads intersect at one artist. Without even a full-length album, Lil Nas X has managed to bubble up many questions about music and culture — where is the social media-fixated world headed? Is rap ready to embrace homosexuality? What even defines rap?
At the beginning of this article, I said that Lil Nas X was inevitable. At first glance it seems like he was just a fresh-faced kid who happened to stumble into commercial success. Mentally, it was easy to file him under “one-hit wonder” status. But going even a couple levels deeper, it’s apparent that he is manufactured for this world: our brains programmed for content roulettes, our hearts open to accepting all forms of sexuality, and our ears craving something new yet nostalgic. For these reasons, he’s cultivated a place in music few artists achieve: a place with staying power.
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*The same profile also stated that while filming a video in a canyon with no cell service, Lil Nas X couldn’t check Twitter for so long that he physically didn’t know what to do with his hands.
**Funnily enough, Cardi B also collaborated with Lil Nas X on the song Rodeo in 7.
- **Frances Bean Cobain (daughter of Kurt Cobain) approves.
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