Rapper’s viral hit pulled from country chart, igniting controversy
THE DEFINITION of “real” country music often sparks fierce debate. This week, it also ignited a controversy.
It all started in December when 19-year- old Atlanta rapper Lil Nas X released “Old Town Road,” which his producer described as “country trap” and his label called a “country-inspired rap track.” Incorporating banjo, hip-hop and sampling Nine Inch Nails’s “34 Ghosts IV,” it arrived with a music video featuring cowboys amid the Wild West.
The song blew up on YouTube and SoundCloud and fuelled a popular meme on the app TikTok; by late February, it was No. 1 on Spotify’s Viral 50 playlist. It soon topped the iTunes country chart. The success sparked a bidding war among record labels, and Lil Nas X landed a deal with Sony Music’s Columbia Records. In midMarch, “Old Town Road” went mainstream as it broke into the all-genre Billboard Hot 100 at No. 83. The song also debuted at No. 19 on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart, which measures streaming, sales and radio play.
That’s when the controversy began.
Earlier this week, Rolling Stone published a feature about how “Old Town Road” became a viral hit, reporting that Billboard had “quietly removed” the song from the Hot Country chart and “informed Lil Nas X’s label, Columbia Records, that his inclusion on the ranking was a mistake.” Billboard 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.”
The song is currently at No. 12 on the Hot Rap chart.
The story swiftly made the rounds in music outlets. Lil Nas X, whose label did not return The Washington Post’s request for comment, Instagrammed Pitchfork’s article with a sad face emoji and wrote “extremely disappointed.”
He tweeted: “just because old town road has funny lines doesn’t mean it’s parody. it has a theme. anybody with ears can tell i put some kind of effort into that song.”
This isn’t the first time there has been dispute over country classification. In 2016, Texas band Green River Ordinance did not seem thrilled when Billboard labelled them as “rock and folk,” taking away their chance for high placement on the country album chart.
But “Old Town Road” was primed to blow up on social media, as it touched on several polarising topics: the decades-long debate of what defines country music; the idea that many of country’s recent biggest hits involve elements of rap and hip-hop, from Jason Aldean’s “Dirt Road Anthem” to Sam Hunt’s “Break Up in a Small Town”; and the fact that country music is an overwhelmingly white genre, in which a black artiste was only recently able to launch his career with a No. 1 hit.
Rapper Ski Mask the Slump God tweeted a Twitter Moment roundup of the issue and wrote, “Wow, Discrimination At It’s Finest”; Lil Nas X quoted the tweet and added, “bro thank u for being one of the only artistes to speak on this publicly.”
Billboard said that dropping the song from the country chart “had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artiste.” Lil Nas X’s manager Danny Kang agreed, telling Rolling Stone “That’s a hip-hop song” and explaining that
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
the rapper strategically listed the track on SoundCloud and iTunes as country to gain more traction. (“Old Town Road” no longer appears on the iTunes country chart.)
A Billboard spokeswoman declined to make staffers available for an interview, but released an extended statement to The Washington Post on Thursday night:
“When categorising genres for chart inclusion, Billboard examines several factors, including a song or album’s musical composition (with acknowledgement that sounds within genres consistently evolve; an artiste’s recording history and track record within a particular genre; similarity to current charting titles in that genre; which radio formats and streaming platforms are showing notable support; and how a title is being marketed.
“In the case of ‘Old Town Road’ by Lil Nas X, it prematurely charted on Hot Country Songs because its rights holders had tagged it as country, but it hadn’t yet been thoroughly vetted for the standard criteria noted above.
The song’s removal was primarily based on the track’s overall lack of country music instrumentation, and subsequently, in the tracking week ending Mar 24, it received 63 plays (translating to 286,000 audience impressions) on radio stations reporting to Billboard’s Mainstream R& B/ Hip-Hop airplay chart and zero on stations reporting to the Country Airplay survey, according to Nielsen Music.
“The song is also classified as various forms of rap, but not country, on Spotify; was not released by a country- focused record label; and its producer, YoungKio, told Billboard, ‘ This beat is a trap beat with a rock-type sample. That’s how I see it. It’s not a country beat.’
“Decisions to remove a title are never made lightly or without thought given to all affected parties.
“The removal of a title from any of our genre charts is not a common occurrence, but has happened in the past under similar circumstances in which a charted title was deemed not an ideal fit after additional analysis.
“At the same time, such decisions are not final and remain subject to further review as the market evolves.”
While many on social media debated the issue, it also turned into a larger conversation about how artistes of colour are treated by the music industry, including in the pop and rock genres.
Others brought up the fact that, again, lots of country hits don’t sound like “traditional” country anymore, so why should this song be treated differently? — WPBloomberg