By Charles Smith
Lil Nas X just released a remix of his hit song “Old Town Road,” now with Billy Ray Cyrus. Lil Nas X calls it “country trap,” mixing banjos and 808s, rap flows and country blues. A week ago, the original got kicked off its high perch on the Billboard Hot Country Songs chart. Billboard decided it wasn’t country enough. The song’s still 7th on Hot R&B/Hip-Hop.
That act of gatekeeping lets us know something: This song is good.
Billboard has no idea what music is. For commercial purposes, they have to organize all the sound out there into digestible types. This method works great to understand where the common ear is right now, but it’s no art history.
Popular music genres aren’t separated by lyrics or composition, which is how Billboard divides its music. It’s a lot simpler than that—genre is a feeling. Rock critic Robert Christgau defined punk as any “short-fast guitar unit that gives me a thrill.” Sure, maybe that implies ragged yelps against power and a lotta distortion, but that’s not what punk is.
Punk is stripped back music. It noticeably withholds complexity to draw out strength; like Jonathan Richman sings, “Kind of far away, kind of dignified.” Hip-hop falls out of the punk tradition and retains that ethos. These guys aren’t just bad at their instruments—they don’t even play instruments (except the producers, bless them).
What hip-hop gives in return is commitment to fun and personality. They’re so done with live instruments that hip-hop started sampling old tracks. “Old Town Road” is sampled from the Nine Inch Nails song “34 Ghosts IV.” Yeah, punk, funk, jazz and rock are burnt. Why not pick among their ashes?
Since the beginning, it’s been obvious that hip-hop is an alloy. Tribe added a little jazz; Rage added a little funk. Ski Mask started by rapping on rock tracks; goofball outlaws like Lil Uzi have drawn out the punk again. Since the 90s, hip-hop has reformed pop.
Hip-hop absorbs genres and leaves them in the phase between sincerity and parody. Hip-hop’s sample aesthetic threatens to make a music world where genres fall together or cease to carry any meaning.
Country critic Grady Smith mourns that country is evolving towards other genres: “Pop, hip-hop, R&B and country are all almost going in the exact same direction. And that’s boring! Then we’re gonna lose all that beautiful variety that makes these distinct genres special.”
Nice ear, Grady! Sounds like country music has an identity problem. It’s called the changing color of the American consumer. That explains all their talk of tradition and purity. Doesn’t matter, we’ll leave country music out to dry.
In the meantime, the adults will be over here riding horses.
We have all the sound in the world at our fingertips. Why draw lines between it? The worst thing we could get is cooler music.
Now, Lil Nas X is swallowing country in hip-hop. Thank God.
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