When Lil Nas X, a young black hip-hop artist from Atlanta, created the surprise hit “Old Town Road,” he did not imagine that it would end up at the center of a debate on race, the Nashville establishment and musical genres.
The track marries a beat familiar to hip-hop fans with acoustic sounds and lyrics filled with cowboy imagery. Lil Nas X had no record deal when he made it, and the song bubbled up on the internet before it made three different Billboard charts: the Hot 100, Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs and Hot Country Songs.
Once it was a success, Billboard removed it from its country chart. On Friday, in what seemed to be a dare to Billboard and Nashville, Lil Nas X released a new version of the song that included the 1990s country star Billy Ray Cyrus as a featured vocalist. Was it country enough for them now?
When Billboard banished “Old Town Road” from the country chart, it issued a statement to Rolling Stone claiming the song “does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.” With Mr. Cyrus along for the ride, it is possible that country radio stations who ignored it will start playing it.
Billboard’s decision to drop the song from Hot Country Songs prompted a debate about race and country music itself. White Nashville artists, like Florida Georgia Line and Sam Hunt, have used hip-hop-influenced beats and production techniques for years. Do those performers have more leeway than Lil Nas X?
Shane Morris, a former record label executive in Nashville, thinks so. “They said there were compositional problems,” Mr. Morris said of Billboard’s chartmakers, “because they didn’t know how to justify it any other way without sounding completely racist.”
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