Wow, This is really the last passion post of the year. Who knows maybe I’ll continue this blog thread when I’m hit that summer boredom slump, or maybe this blog will sit untouched collecting metaphoric dust forever.
I’ve covered a lot of different topics and aspects of the urban music genre throughout the year since beginning this blog post thread.
For the very last post, I decided to do a post on I have been seeing on the twitterverse that related to Hip Hop/Rap.
The rise of “Old Town Road” by Lil Nas X. This is a very interesting phenomenon and shows how in this day and age, it’s less about how good your song is but how many views it gets on social media. I remember when Lil Nas X was a Nicki Minaj Stan account that made really interesting, but wild scenario threads on Twitter and well as mass-produced viral tweets. What should be known is that he was a tweet decker which is someone who basically steals other tweets from smaller accounts and passes them off as their own. He already had a large following before he produced the song.
The one day back in early December he created the tweet that would change the course of history. I vividly remember the tweet. It was of a man at a rodeo dancing, the song in the background was of a snippet of the song that will eventually become “Old Town Road,” and the caption was “Country music is evolving.” At the time of this writing, the tweet has 35.3k Retweets and 125k likes. After many people in the comments encouraged him to make a full drop, he dropped the full-length song almost two weeks later.
I don’t much about what happened between December and now, but a quick google search shows me that the song went viral on an app called Tik Tok. Somehow it moved from Tik Tok, to twitter and to becoming the number one country song in America.
Controversy arose when Billboard removed the song off the charts stating that it was not country enough, to be considered a country song. What needs to be known is that “Old Town Road” is a hybrid between rap and country but it listed under the country genre. This sparked outrage with many citing how many popular rap songs aren’t “rap” enough but still remain on the charts.
This issue was solved simply with country legend, Billy Ray Cyrus got on a remix with him, putting the song back as the number 1 country song on Billboard.
Here’s why I think this whole story is interesting. In a mere four months, a tweetdecker went from being only known on twitter from stealing tweets to being known around the country for a 2-minute song about having horses in the back and cheating on his imaginary wife, having the number one song and being signed to a record label.
The way music gets popular and artists get signed have changed dramatically since the advent of social media. No longer does it matter if your song is good, but how many people are exposed to it. If Lil Nas X has attempted to release a song like this 20 even 10 years ago he probably would have sold a maximum 100 singles, or perhaps he would have become one of those one-hit wonders that our parents occasionally speak on.
If this is any indication, music in all genres not just rap and hip hop is evolving. Quality and talent are no longer the most important factors of what becomes a hit but who can make a catchy song. I honestly don’t know if this will be a good thing for music, but it will make it so that more upcoming artists have the chance to have their music exposed to the masses if they know how to navigate social media.