{"id":28287,"date":"2019-08-05T07:31:01","date_gmt":"2019-08-05T13:31:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/b1062259"},"modified":"2019-08-05T07:31:01","modified_gmt":"2019-08-05T13:31:01","slug":"how-lil-nas-x-is-changing-the-world-of-hip-hop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/music-news\/how-lil-nas-x-is-changing-the-world-of-hip-hop\/","title":{"rendered":"How Lil Nas X Is Changing the World of Hip-Hop"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"photo-txt-0\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"43.069176882662\">\n<div class=\"column post-content__image--left post-content__image\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"32\"> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image--full\" src=\"https:\/\/akns-images.eonline.com\/eol_images\/Entire_Site\/201975\/rs_634x918-190805062221-634-lil-nas-x2-emd-080119.jpg?fit=inside|900:auto&amp;output-quality=90\" title=\"Lil Nas X\" alt=\"Lil Nas X\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"image__credits\">Elliot Morgan for <em>GQ Hype<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-photo-text\" readability=\"26.770609318996\">\n<p>It&#8217;s been a big year for <strong>Lil Nas X.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/culture\/article\/lil-nas-x-interview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>GQ Hype<\/em><\/a>, the 20-year-old rapper spent last summer finishing up school and struggling to hold down jobs at theme parks and restaurant chains. Now, he&#8217;s making <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1060399\/lil-nas-x-makes-history-as-old-town-road-continues-to-top-the-charts\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Billboard history<\/a>. Just last week, his hit &#8220;Old Town Road&#8221; secured the no. 1 spot on the Hot 100 chart&nbsp;for the 17th week in a row\u2014breaking records previously held by <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/mariah_carey\">Mariah Carey<\/a><\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong>Boyz II Men<\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;One Sweet Day&#8221; and <strong>Luis<\/strong> <strong>Fonsi<\/strong>,&nbsp;<strong>Daddy Yankee<\/strong>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/justin_bieber\">Justin Bieber<\/a><\/strong>&#8216;s &#8220;Despacito.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m happy it&#8217;s become a part of so many people&#8217;s lives,&#8221; he told the magazine. &#8220;Kids are going to grow up with that song and play it to remember these times, which makes me feel amazing.&#8221;&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>However, Lil Nas X&#8217;s road to success wasn&#8217;t an easy one.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last year, in October, as a struggling artist starting to lose faith in what I could be, I went looking for beats on YouTube,&#8221; he recently wrote on Instagram. &#8220;I remember clicking on so many generic-sounding beats trying to find the right one for me. When suddenly I came across a country-trap sounding masterpiece. I immediately knew I would make something special out of it!&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"text-2\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"65.369242199108\">\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-text-only\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"27.276374442793\">\n<p>He turned that beat into &#8220;Old Town Road&#8221; and released it in December. The song went viral on TikTok and landed on&nbsp;Billboard&#8217;s&nbsp;cross-genre Hot 100 chart, the Hot Country Songs chart and the Hot R&amp;B\/Hip-Hop Songs chart all at the same time.However,&nbsp;Billboard&nbsp;later told <a href=\"https:\/\/www.rollingstone.com\/music\/music-features\/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-810844\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Rolling Stone<\/em><\/a> that, upon further review, the song did not merit inclusion on the country chart. As a result, it was removed\u2014causing a bit of controversy.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I believe whenever you&#8217;re trying something new, it&#8217;s always going to get some kind of bad reception,&#8221; Lil Nas X told&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/time.com\/5561466\/lil-nas-x-old-town-road-billboard\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Time<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Soon, other artists started showing Lil Nas X their support, including <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/billy_ray_cyrus\">Billy Ray Cyrus<\/a><\/strong>. The two <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1029960\/you-have-to-hear-billy-ray-cyrus-and-lil-nas-x-s-old-town-road-remix\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">released a remix<\/a> of the popular song in April. Today, the track has more than 347.5 million views on YouTube. It&#8217;s also been nominated for <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1058690\/2019-mtv-vmas-nominations-the-complete-list\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">a number MTV VMAs<\/a>\u2014including Video of the Year and Song of the Year\u2014and inspired other collaborations\u2014including Lil Nas X&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1059520\/lil-nas-x-and-bts-rm-just-gifted-us-with-an-unforgettable-old-town-road-remix\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">recent remix<\/a> with <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/bts\">BTS<\/a><\/strong> singer <strong>RM<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I&#8217;m still in the first stage of figuring out who I am,&#8221; he told <em>GQ Hype<\/em>. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know what kind of music I&#8217;ll be making 10 years from now. I want to do everything and I&#8217;m still learning how I work. But the one thing I&#8217;ll always know is that people don&#8217;t know what they want until they get it. They didn&#8217;t know they wanted a song about taking a horse to the old town road in 2019. But they did.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"photo-txt-3\" data-hook=\"scrollable-block\" readability=\"41.115068493151\">\n<div class=\"column post-content__image--left post-content__image\" data-swiftype-index=\"false\" readability=\"32\"><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"image--full\" src=\"https:\/\/akns-images.eonline.com\/eol_images\/Entire_Site\/201975\/rs_634x793-190805062221-634-lil-nas-x-emd-080119.jpg?fit=inside|900:auto&amp;output-quality=90\" title=\"Lil Nas X\" alt=\"Lil Nas X\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"image__credits\">Elliot Morgan for <em>GQ Hype<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<section data-textblock-tracking=\"text-block-photo-text\" readability=\"22.909090909091\">\n<p>Not only was 2019 a big year for Lil Nas X career-wise, but it was also a big year for him personally. In June\u2014<a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1053394\/lil-nas-x-seemingly-comes-out-as-gay-before-pride-month-ends-some-of-y-all-already-know\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">at the end of Pride Month<\/a>\u2014he came out as gay.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Live your life to its fullest potential and don&#8217;t really care too much about what other people think of you,&#8221; he told the publication. &#8220;I used to say that clich\u00e9, but I never really lived by it, until now.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>While he said he can feel a little overwhelmed &#8220;having to be a voice,&#8221; he understands the importance of his visibility as a member of the LGBTQ community in the world of hip-hop.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Since I came out, people have been coming up to me saying, &#8216;You&#8217;re making a way for us,'&#8221;&nbsp;he said.<\/p>\n<p>To read Lil Nas X&#8217;s full interview, check out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gq-magazine.co.uk\/culture\/article\/lil-nas-x-interview\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>GQ Hype<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eonline.com\/news\/1062259\/how-lil-nas-x-is-changing-the-world-of-hip-hop?cmpid=rss-000000-rssfeed-365-topstories&#038;utm_source=eonline&#038;utm_medium=rssfeeds&#038;utm_campaign=rss_topstories\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: E! Online<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Elliot Morgan for GQ Hype It&#8217;s been a big year for Lil Nas X. According to GQ Hype, the 20-year-old rapper spent last summer finishing up school and struggling to hold down jobs at theme parks and restaurant chains. Now, he&#8217;s making Billboard history. Just last week, his hit &#8220;Old Town Road&#8221; secured the no. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[98],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-28287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-music-news"],"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-18 05:35:11","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KIFT - The LIFT FM","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28287\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kift\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}