Montero Lamar Hill’s parents must be proud. Surprised, but proud.
Hill, now better known as the country trap star Lil Nas X, has produced has a record-breaking hit single and sparked a conversation about establishment country music, race, and allyship – all less than a year after he worried his parents by dropping out of college to make his way in the music business.
Lil Nas X’s song, “Old Town Road,” is a little bit country and a whole lot of hip-hop, a genre-bending foot-stomping ode to the cowboy life. But it’s also a sign of Hill’s marketing genius. He skipped the “languish on Soundcloud” part of his career and debuted the song partly as a meme which he nurtured until it became a challenge on TikTok, an app which lets users create videos set to music clips.
Before the song reached the mainstream charts to be sorted into limiting categories by music industry professionals, “Old Town Road” had millions of avid fans who accepted it for what it was, a cowboy song featuring trap drum beats and both horse and Gucci references.
In addition to earning Lil Nas X a record deal, “Old Town Road” appears to be the first song to appear on these three different Billboard charts: The Hot 100, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Country Songs, where it debuted at the 19th spot on March 16 – until it abruptly disappeared.
“Upon further review, it was determined that ‘Old Town Road’ by Lil Nas X does not currently merit inclusion on Billboard‘s country charts,” a Billboard representative told Rolling Stone. “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.” They also informed Lil Nas X’s label, Columbia Records, that the song’s inclusion on the chart was a mistake.
Fans of Lil Nas X, who is a black teen from Atlanta, protested. Even the cast of Avengers Endgame did a dramatic reading of the lyrics.
But the tip of the ten-gallon hat goes to country music legend Billy Ray Cyrus, who joined Lil Nas X in a remix version of the song which debuted over the weekend. While he gave the song the country bona fides it didn’t actually need, Cyrus sent a bigger message: Everyone is welcome to enjoy the Yeehaw Agenda.
While black artists have always been a part of country music – check out this truly amazing thread – Billboard’s decision is seen by some as designed to protect a mostly-white genre and a dominant Nashville machine. “It doesn’t take much to question whether something is really country or not,” one expert tells Rolling Stone. “Trap drums [like the ones in ‘Old Town Road’] are one of the things that make people want to say, ‘It’s something else.’”
But it’s no secret that traditionalists have been unwelcoming to artists of color. “Hate mail has been a part of my life. That’s just the way it is,” country star Darius Rucker told the Wall Street Journal in 2014. The former Hootie and the Blowfish frontman says while it’s been worse for earlier artists, there are some people who just don’t want him playing the music. “I always say that no matter what happens to me as a black man in country music, I can handle it.”
While Lil Nas X phenomenon could have been a delightful chapter in the burgeoning business case for diversity, your faithful amateur historian would be remiss if she didn’t point out that gatekeeping and erasure is nothing new when it comes to mythmaking the American West.
Here’s just one example: While there were plenty of black cowboys in our past, it’s quite likely that the character of the Lone Ranger was based on an escaped enslaved man who lived and worked with Native populations.
Bass Reeves, a master of disguise with a superhero reputation, was instrumental in bringing order to the developing western territory, in part working to protect five Native American tribes—Cherokee, Seminole, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw—whose land had become overrun with criminals, and who were barred from apprehending and prosecuting non-Native people for their crimes thanks to restrictions associated with the Indian Removal Act of 1830. He was fluent in two Native languages and he fought alongside Native American troops who turned out for the Union cause during the Civil War.
Think how different cowboy-and-Indian play dates might have been back in the day!
Reeves left his work after he was freed via the 13th amendment, but was recruited back years later to become the first black deputy U.S. marshal in the West. And by the time he hung up his spurs, he’d had arrested over 3,000 men and women who had broken federal laws in the Indian Territory, sometimes wearing clever disguises, rarely firing a shot.
And yet, Bass Reeves never got a movie, a television show, a comic book, or a country western song.
It’d sure be cool if he did. Maybe Lil Nas X should write one.