Switched on Pop - Lil Nas X: Country at the Crossroads

Episode Date: April 16, 2019

Lil Nas X currently holds the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart with his surprise hit “Old Town Road.” But though the song is dripping with country twang, you won’t find it anywhere on the country charts. That’s because Billboard removed it, on the grounds of not having enough “musical elements” of country—a move that in turn left many wondering if the vanishing had something to do with Lil Nas X, a black artist, venturing into a field dominated by white musicians. We dig deep into the history and musical matter of “Old Town Road,” then pit it against other country hits to test its deep fried bonafides. Songs DiscussedLil Nas X - Old Town RoadNine Inch Nails - 34 Ghosts IVBeba Rexa - Mean to Be (feat. Florida Georgia Line)Kelsea Ballerini - Miss You MoreSam Hunt - Speakers / Ghetto Cowboy - Bone Thugz N' HarmonyFilmore - Love That About You Lil Nas X - Old Town Road (feat. Billy Ray Cyrus) Mason Ramsey - Walmart Yodeling KidHank Williams - Love Sick BluesEmmett Miller & His Georgia Crackers - Lock Sick Blues  Other LinksTanya Texas Tucker's list of Black artists and their collaborations with country starsJezebel interview with Bri Malandro, originator of the "Yee Haw Agenda" Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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app at eater app.com. It's free for iOS users. Welcome to Switched-on Pop. I'm musicologist Nate Sloan. And I'm songwriter Charlie Harding. Charlie, today we are discussing Little Nas X in his track, Old Town Road. We're really going to go there? Oh, we're really going to go there. This is currently number one on the Billboard Hot 100 charts. Is it really? Yeah, as of this recording. I wonder how the Billboard feels about that. We'll get to that. And this is a song that has sparked a national conversation about what country music sounds like and who gets to sing it. Do I get to sing it? All that will be tackled and more.

But we're just going to push this whole question of genre to the side for a second. Yeah. And we're just going to listen to this song. Yeah. So let's just start with a basic question. Is this song good? Oh, I like this song. Yeah.

Tell me why. Well, you revealed one of my most inner dark secrets last week, which is that I have a deep love of nine-inch nails. And this is based off of a, I think a creative commons licensed nine-inch nails track. So I really liked that. That was the first thing I noticed. But it's also a fun country song. I think it gets the twing really, it's well done. It's a fun trap beat. And I feel like it has, it does a good job of kind of rubbing up against my ex- expectations of the boundaries of genre in a non-intellectual way, just like in a musical way. I'm like, ooh, I haven't quite heard things quite exactly like this. And I like it. It's a fascinating, dare I say, postmodern melange of sounds here. And it is really deeply, powerfully catchy. Like this is ingrained in my synaptic pathways now.

Okay. So we both agree. This song is fire. Yes. Let's talk a little about where it comes from. And we have a clue here. You're already dropped. You're as usual getting way ahead of us, dropping the nine inch nails knowledge, dropping the C word, the country word. But it's okay. We're going to get there. But I want to start like, what is this song? Where did it come from?

And how did it get to be number one on the Billboard Hot 100? And then again, along the way, we'll talk about the controversy. It's generated. But first, just where did this song come from? It came from a young man named Little Nas X, aka Montero Lamar Hill. And this song is going to tell us so much about the sound and the business of popular music today. Let's go into it a little further. First of all, let's just listen to a little more of the lyrics of this song and understand I think why it's become so popular. It is funny. It's clever.

It's surprising. Let's go to the second verse. Riding on a tractor, lean all in my boy, my baby. You can go in a nice. My life is a movie. it's yeah yeah we got so cowboy hat from Gucci wranglers on my booty right that's a really funny rhyme writing on my tractor lean in my bladder lean being the the purple drank the rovitussin codeine mixture that a lot of southern rappers especially are known to drink so it's like as you said this fun mashup of country tropes with hip hop tropes yeah kind of putting a little ironic spin on some country imagery but it's not it doesn't doesn't feel like it's ever mocking country music or country tropes. It feels like it's celebrating them and leaning into them. There are other songs which employ way more cliche, which feel more like satire, which are entirely earnest. Yeah, yeah, we've probably discussed a few of those on the show over the years. So Lil Nas X has dropped this very entertaining, very lyrically clever song. And then there's this beat, right? And that has its own story as well. And we get one clue as to where. this beat came from. It comes about 25 seconds into the song and it's this little lyrical

interjection. Did you catch that? Keele? Close. Let's spin it one more time. Okay, I heard Kia. Kia. No, you're close. You went from Kiel to K-K-I-O. You're getting warmer, K-I-O. What's your guest that we're hearing here? It's got to be a producer. Yes. It's the name of the producer. It's the name of the producer. This is like saying like mustard on the track.

Yes, exactly. This is like a little tag, a signature, almost like a watermark, like a like a, like a, on a bill, right? Yeah, yeah. This lets you know that this song is produced by young Keo. You know who that is, right? No idea. Okay. Neither did I.

And that's because young Keo is a here to for unknown, 18 year old beatmaker from the Netherlands. What? Get out of here. This track is the most postmodern song. I'm loving this. Yeah. This is the wild world we live in today, young Charles.

So young Keo, so this is like so interesting to me. How did Young Keo from the Netherlands and Little Nas X, two teenagers from Georgia and the Netherlands respectively get together on this track? Okay. I'm going to guess Snapchat. Have you heard of Beat Stars? Nope. Beat Stars is just one of a number of websites where you, if you make a beat, Charlie,

you can upload it to this site and then charge money for other people to use it. Yes, yes, yes. Little Nas X was looking for a beat, went on to Beat Stars, scrolling through young Keoghos beats. There are hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. He found one he liked and paid $2999 for it. Oh, my God. Proceeded to record his vocals on top of it.

it and fast forward to now number one song in America. Man, I was worried about like artificial intelligence making beats, but there's kids in their bed where I was producing hundreds of them selling them for nearly nothing. Yeah, it's such an interesting wrinkle to this story. You know, the only credit Keo really gets is that shout out. And that's why, and it puts these sort of producer tags or watermarks in a whole new light for me because in a landscape where these. beats are being exchanged globally at like such a fast rate, that might be the only way that you can

sort of put your imprint on something that is going to circulate far beyond your original intention. Do you think the currency of beats is doing better than the currency of Bitcoin? Out of that, we would need an economist for that. They're ever depreciating, it sounds like. I will see. If we do want to talk about the economics for a sec, it's like, my first reaction is like, wow, young Keough, you got screwed here. You're 2999 for a number one song.

That does not seem like a good deal. No. But he reached out to Lil Nas X. Little Nas X attributed him on the track. And he's getting lots of other offers now. Right. So maybe that that 2999 will, you know, amortize over time. The price of it's his entry ticket.

So now we know how this beat hooked up with this singer. But now let's go deeper into something you mentioned at the at the get-go. Nine-inch nails. How do they fit into this story? How does Trent Rezner's industrial rock band come into here? Yon Kyo used a sample from a nine-inch Nails track called, okay, let me see if I get it. 34 Ghosts, four. Yes.

But the 34 is numeric and the four is Roman numerals. That's correct. Do you know why? I think I know why. Oh, really? So Ghosts was this album that Trent Rezner put out in the 2000s area. I can't remember exactly when. 2008, okay.

And it was a deluxe, I think, four discs because I think CDs still mattered then, right? And he put it out under a Creative Commons license. And they were all, he basically had all of these songs that were just titled numbers, one, two, three, four. This is the 34th track on the Ghosts Four project. Ah. And they're very naked tracks, not a lot happening. Some of them have that standard angst that you,

get from nine-inch nails. Actually, a lot of it sounds almost like the social network soundtrack that we heard, Trent Rezner did, one of Grammy for her with Atticus Ross. And there are others that have some, like, acoustic, also kind of melancholy things. And this is, this one's actually very popular. In fact, I hear this all the time on public radio. This is a favorite song of This American Life. Use it all the time. Wait, really? The BBC Chicago is This American Life. I'm our glass. Chukhanna Jaffe Wat, one of our producers, has been reporting this story. Because the idea was like these beats were really sparse and were kind of meant for interpretation.

Trent Reznor was really interested in seeing how are the ways that we can change music distribution. And so he did some of those things where the albums were free. And in this case, the album was like truly free. You could pay what you want and you could just take the music and do what you want with it. And so it's not surprising that this track is being used here because I'm pretty sure I'd have to check the licensing if it was attribution or not attribution. Creative Commons has different licensing rules and how it works. But basically it was a lot easier to use this as a sample than another song. This is sort of in its original intent was getting out into the world through new forms, whether that's public radio or a country trap.

So Ira Glass is in the mix now? Wow, this story just keeps on getting more complicated. Let's simplify it by just listening to this track from nine inch nails. It's pretty and it's introspective. When you hear it in this version dissociated from Old Town Road, it's kind of wild that this is the basis for a number one track right now. You can hear, though, that in what kind of sounds like a banjo, I don't know if it is a banjo. It sounds banjo-ish, but the melody's in there. There's definitely, yeah, so this is a great question. Like, what are we even listening to here? Some kind of combination of plucked string instruments, maybe banjo, maybe guitar, maybe bass.

if anything, maybe it's even like a fretless banjo. There's also definitely some processing of these sounds going on as well. Well, and that's part of Trent Resner's thing. It's like you never know if it's an acoustic instrument, electronic instrument, or the blurring of the two. Yeah. So let's hold on to this. Let's put that in our utility belt because we might need it later when we come to the

Big Sea discussion, whether this is country or not. But for now, let's just press on ahead. Okay. So to review so far, Netherlands, teenager, young kids. samples this Creative Commons nine inch nails track from 2008 into a beat which is purchased by little gnaz x an Atlanta teenager in which he records his lyrics to old town road okay yeah now there's one more step though that is another very 21st century phenomenon to get us from this track to billboard's dominance and that is something called tick to oh i know tick to okay you then

you know more than I because this was a dive for me into um a very different culture than one I was familiar with. Yeah. So TikTok, then, okay, you're familiar. You're an expert. I'm not an expert. I'm not too late. Too late.

You are de facto senior correspondent on all TikTok related affairs. I don't mean to trivialize it, but it's kind of Vine 2.0. Fine was this video service. You could upload short videos to that Twitter bought and shut down. And I think TikTok is kind of like the reincarnation of this, where people make short video clips that play on loop and there's a whole sort of subculture of comedy and drama. And there's like multiple genres of videos. It's a different, it's basically a social media platform that's user generated content of ridiculous and interesting video stuff.

Yeah. That's a beautiful synopsis, Charlie. And now if you'll permit me, based on my dive, my research into this TikTok community, I'll narrate the viral change. And challenge video that made the song so popular on the platform. Okay, we open on a cup marked Yeha juice. Okay, the star of the video picks up the cup, puts it to their lips, and they start imbibing this yaha juice, and they're dressed in some kind of plain outfit, you know, just like some everyday clothes. And then upon drinking this magic elixir at this moment,

something happens They've got the horses in the bag Horse stock is attached Head is maddy black got the boots Black to match They transform into a completely country outfit Like plaid cowboy hats

Cowboy boots head to toes Yeah I don't know how compelling that was to listen to But watching it it's really fun It's really fun just watching people Not just people cats, dogs People all over the world drinking yaha juice and becoming this new country-fied version of themselves.

It is very entertaining, and that's really where the song started gaining traction. It was so popular that radio DJs who wanted to play it, there wasn't an official song. There was no release version. So how did they play it?

They stripped it off of SoundCloud. Off of YouTube even. No way. Yeah. Where incidentally, the video on YouTube is simply images from a video game called Red Dead Redemption,

Which features a bunch of black cowboys on horses riding around. Oh, interesting. Okay. Now we're getting to the controversy surrounding the sign. I think we've traced how it came to be, how it came to be popular. Now it's rising up on the billboard charts as it makes its way sort of from TikTok to like larger media. And the controversy. So Lil Nas X, we haven't dropped this yet, is African American.

And this song is taken down. by Billboard as in it is removed from the country charts because it is deemed not musically country enough oopsie daisies and this if as if the song's like sort of crazy ascent hasn't been supercharged enough this this controversy just takes it to a whole nother level because now all of a sudden people are like wait a minute why did the song get taken down and are you sure it's not because of the race of the performer right not the actual musical quality that's right so okay So now this song is a bona fide controversy.

And we have a final player in our drama, right? From Lil Nas X, Young Keo, Trent Rezner, Ira Glass. And finally, Billy Ray Cyrus enters the picture. He throws his support behind Lil Nas X and even goes so far as to record a remix of the song with him. Let's listen to a little bit of Billy Ray Cyrus's verse. Slow down. What? What else do you need to know here?

Billy Ray Cyrus Billy Ray Cyrus Father of Miley Singer of Akey Breaky Heart Country superstar I just think it's hilarious It's kind of like I imagine there's a whole generation

Of people who Who is Billy Ray Cyrus Yeah Wait whoa I don't know where this Billy Ray hate Is coming from Charlie But I think you are diminishing His fame as the

Sion of one of the most Famous musical families around now Has he made any music He doesn't have to He was on Hanamont Tanna, he doesn't need to make music anymore. I think it's hilarious. All right, let's put the track.

All right. Hat down, cross town, living like a rock star. Spend a lot of money on my brand new guitar. Baby's got a half a diamond rings and fend his sports brawls. Riding down Rodeo in my Maserati sports car. God no stress I've been through to that old tank. He sounds good, man. He's got that rasping his voice.

I love that he's playing with all of the. same cliches, right? He's driving his Maserati down Rodeo Drive, which is an amazing little country turn of phrase because Rodeo Drive, rodeo right? It's like the fanciest

street in Beverly Hills with the fanciest cars and the fanciest shops. It's a place that I always feel extremely uncomfortable walking down here in L.A. I do not fit in. But he's like, he's using the same lyrical satire as Lill

Nausax. And I think we see by Billy Ray doing this that, oh yeah, there's country stars that make the same kind of jokes. Country stars make fun of the tropes about trucks and whiskey in songs.

And this is a really great play on that. Totally. And one more thing about the Billy Ray remix that is interesting is, remember a few weeks ago we did an episode about how Spotify is changing the sound of pop music? And how one of the big things is songs are getting shorter. Yep. Condensed. How long do you think the original release of the song by Lil Nas X was?

I'd give it two minutes and 16 seconds. And you would be wrong because it is a minute and 53 seconds. No way. Wow. So the Billy Ray Cyrus remix takes it up to like two minutes and 37 seconds, I think. So I just think it's a really interesting corollary to that episode. Yeah. Okay. So now at this point we have discussed the origin of this song. It's rise to the top of the billboard charts in spite of the controversy surrounding. It's being taken down from the country charts. Let's take a quick break. When we come back, we're going to answer a burning question. Was Billboard right to take this song down? Okay.

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Every Saturday in your audio and video feeds Okay, so once again, Old Town Road, this country smash Was deemed by Billboard actually not to be a country song at all Taken down from the country charts And now it's currently risen up to number one On the pop charts, probably not a little bit Because of that controversy. Yeah.

Which raises a question, right? What is country? Who gets to decide? What are the limits of this genre? A question we've explored a number of, of times on the show because I think it is so endlessly fascinating. But let's just like follow Billboard's lead here for a second because they have just created a system in which certain songs like Old Town Road are not deemed musically country enough to be on the charts. And if you're

wondering what that means, here's a quote from the wise people at Billboard, quote, the song is not embracing enough elements of today's country music in its current version. Okay, so to be clear, they have established some criteria, but they have not told us what that criteria is. Well, here, I can go on. Okay. Quote, determining which chart a song lives on is an ongoing process that depends on a number of factors, most notably the song's musical composition, but also how the song is marketed and promoted the musical history of the artist, airplay the song receives, and how the song is platformed on streaming services. Oh. Still feels very vague to me, but... These are some very non-mutually exclusive criteria.

But let's give it a try. Well, musical, they put musical composition at the forefront. So I think that's what we should do too. Okay. So let's help Billboard out. Let's comb through the country charts and see if we can't find some other tracks that don't belong. And we'll start with BB Rexa and Florida-Georgia line meant to be. Awesome to me.

Nice descending harmonic progression there. I wonder in fact if that descending harmonic progression is a reference to let it be by the Beatles. That just occurred to me. Anyway, we can table that. Okay, so does this belong on the country charts? Thumbs up, thumbs down. We are the Roman emperors here. Does it live or does it die?

On the contemporary country charts? Sure, why not? Okay, so what is, where do we point to saying like, okay, this has the musical elements of a country song to quoth? Billboard. I think essential is vocal twang. Okay. So you got a saying way up here and even more. I'm like, in here. So it's not, whoa, it's not about, because that guy had a low voice. Oh, yeah, no, but even if you got a low voice, you're talking about the nasal, the nasal twang. Yeah, like that. Nasal base is still appropriate. Yeah. Yeah. That you do it much more.

The twine factor. Yeah. Okay. There is a pedal steel. Is there? Yeah. Wait, rewind that back. Let me hear that pedal steel. that whining, Sinty stuff. Yep, okay, I hear it, I hear it, that sort of high pitch, it's spacious, kind of metallic sound

in the background, you're right, and there's got a, on top of vocal twang, there's often instrumental twang, which is often the banjo, the mandolin gives you a little bit of that, the way that you play

the electric guitar even, right? Like, can I do that for you really quickly? Yeah. Yeah, so you can even get it in an instrument, Like the guitar, you know, some guitar is just sort of like big and open, like, but if you want it to be like really country and you want to twang, you can do something like...

I'm loving that twang. It's almost like if a duck sang, they would sound like that. And you're producing that twang by the way you're, you're plucking the guitar, maybe the way you've dialed in the different, the tone wheels and timbers of the instrument. It's traditionalist in the way that people, play this guitar. Like this is a telecaster, Fender's original electric guitar, and it plays through an old amp, and it plays through old gear, and it is as much country and sort of looking backward

as sometimes the genre can be. Let me get that distinction one more time. Let's hear the open tone. Yeah. So this is like warmer and more. Yeah. It's like, you know, it's nice. Yeah.

But if I play it here down at the bridge and go, Yeah. And you can do like a really fun. You get it really. Yeah. So I'm watching. And you just moved your hand further down to the kind of bass of the strings, kind of muted it with your palm a little bit.

And we get that characteristic sound. Country. So it's got got a vocal twang, instrumental twang. And that here is provided by the pedal steel, which is, you know, it's a type of guitar, which is played with a slide. It's very whiny. It has like a...

Yeah, there we go. That's slide guitar, but you can do slide guitar or pedal steel. It has a, that's whiny. Okay, okay. So meant to be by B.B. Rex in Florida, Georgia Line has pedal steel twang and vocal twang. Anything else? Any other country bona fides here? I think lyrical content matters.

Oh, yeah, meant to be, meant to be? That's very, very country there, isn't it? That's kind of vague, right? Yeah. I mean, but if we go to the rest of the song, I would like, I would expect to hear. some tropes about more rural or suburban living. Okay, fair enough. Fair enough.

I did just play you the chorus. Okay, let's move on. So we're in the, our thumbs are kind of in the middle here. Or you, no, your thumbs up. You keep this on the charts. Well, I think because I kind of know where you're going a little bit, which is to say that, like, country as a sound is ever evolving, and we've tackled this on our show, and there's some stuff, which to me actually sounds evidence of influence, maybe some bleed into some

other genres in here, even in this verse. Way to, you spoil everything. Yes, genre is fiction. That is where we're going. But let's put another song on the chopping block. Ready? Thumbs up, thumbs down. Does Kelsey Ballerini's Miss You More belong on the Hot Country charts.

This is a small snare drone. song about a snare drum. There's some beautiful word painting in the very beginning of that chorus, right? I marched to meet my own snare drum and then they come in, and kind of in a weird beat too. It's very nice, very nice. I feel like... Say it, say it.

T-bomb. Drop it. You're twang obsessed. I think that the twang here actually plays a bit of a back seat. Oh, okay. Right? Like when we hear, there are some banjos in there, right? Oh, yeah, yeah.

They're really compressed. They sound like they're in the distance. They're not in the foreground. It's not the most prominent part of the music. It's really there as window dressing to say, don't forget, this is a country song, even though it has an EDMB. Okay, I'm with you.

Do we hear twang and her vocals, though? Yeah. Light twang? Yeah, light twang. Like twang. Okay. So I ask you again, thumb. Up, Thumbs Up, Thumbs Down. Country track? Does this belong in the country charts?

To quote Billboard, are there enough musical elements here? Sure, yeah. Okay, great. It's country. Your generous ruler. Thumbs up for meant to be. Thumbs up for Missy Morales. Do one more. This is Sam Hunt Speakers. Okay, so here I'm really interested in his vocal delivery, especially. And is this country? That sounds almost like a Kendrick Lamar delivery. Or, okay, the first thing I thought was Crazy Bone of Bone Thugs in harmony.

Oh, yes. I've been drinking the smoke and holy shit because I really can't focus. I got to get the hole with a popo scope this big old scourge or swirring. All up in the curb and nickabin, I'm sitting in a genie and seein again We get them.

Love in the back of the truck with the cell gate down just dust and the speakers on. Dang. Love in the back at the truck with the tell gate down just dust and the speakers on. Amusing. So Sam Hunt is totally biting off crazy bone and generations of hip hop flow. Bone thugs in harmony, incidentally, I know this thanks to my partner Whitney, have an amazing track from 98 called Ghetto Cowboy.

Really? That might be the original country wrap mashup. But I digress. Okay, thumbs up, thumbs down, Sam Hunt, speakers. Yes. It's a country song. It's got all the twang. It's got all the twang. It's got all the twang is front and center there. Yeah, we've got acoustic guitar. But then there are all this, so these hip hop elements. the vocal delivery. So right. And at the end of the day, yes, I don't actually think that any of these songs should be ripped from the country charts. And I don't think Old Town Road should be ripped from the country charts either, because obviously what is and what isn't country is not. It's not just a matter of abstract musical quality, but a constantly changing, constantly

in flux discourse about what we collectively decide country is and is not. Yeah, I did some homework. Oh, I'm proud of you. All right. I found another track that I wanted to share with you. Let's hear it. This is Phil Moors, Love That About You. Philmore's love that about you. Okay, I'm not familiar with Fillmore. Don't go changing old time soon.

Because I love that about you. That's fun. What genre is that? I don't even know anymore. It's omnigenetic. I feel like this is of like Ed Shearin, Diplow, and Future wrote a beat together. Very cool. Yeah, that's fun. Fillmore. Again, the point is not, this is country, this isn't. The point is

country is a state of mind, essentially. Country is what you make it. And in fact, the racial dimensions of this particular case with Old Town Road are really interesting because, again, there is, I think, a very real sense that what is allowed to be country is often what is produced by white artists. Well, the country charts are overwhelming. white. Yes. I mean, almost entirely, almost all the time. All the time with one interesting exception, which we will end the show with. But it points too to the deeper history of what we call country and not country that brings us back to the beginning of the billboard charts. But I want to get there through another viral country star. And that's Walmart kid,

a.k. Mason Ramsey, aka the yodeling singer, recorded in a. viral video at Walmart. Okay, so you remember this, right? No, I never saw this. What? Charlie. If you had told me that this was like a recently found phonograph, I would have believed you. This was a little boy named Mason Ramsey who sang the song of Walmart. It was filmed.

It went viral. Just like Lil Nas X he became. He rode that virality to the country charts. No way. And is now, I think, a pretty successful country entertainer. Okay, but what is he singing there? He's singing a song by Hank Williams called Love Sick Blues, first recorded by Hank way back in

1948. I got a feeling of the blues oh Lord since my baby said goodbye Lord I don't know what I'll do All I do is sat and sigh

Oh Lord Yeah Okay But this wasn't a song Written by Hank Williams He in fact was Re-recording it Based on another version

There have been a few versions but we can go back to a recording made in 1928 by Emmett Miller and his Georgia Crackers. This is some traditional jazz. This is some traditional jazz. Yeah. All of a sudden it's like, wait, trace this song far back enough. And if, you know, if the clue wasn't there and it's title enough, love sick blues, like this is absolutely coming from an African-American tradition.

And in fact, this track features some star jazz performers of the day like Tommy Dorsey and Eddie Lang. Okay, but here's one more reveal about this song. Recorded in 1928 by Emmett Miller. Emmett Miller was a musician who came out of the minstrel tradition, who was a white Georgian who performed in blackface. Whoa. So there is a, like, you know, when we did the history of Cotton Eye Joe, so much country music dates back to minstrelsy. And this is the song by Hank Williams via Mason Ramsey is no exception.

Right. But it points to the fact that originally this song wasn't country at all. It was some kind of mix, some hybrid, some jazz, blues, gospel, country, hillbilly hybrid. So how did country music become country music? It wasn't just a natural evolution. People came along and drew a line in the sand, and those people were Billboard, the record industry. Like people who were like, okay,

we need to take this fascinating mixed-up melange of Southern music that crosses racial lines and turn it into something that is very clearly along racial lines so that we can market very clearly to these different groups and increase our proceeds. So they install the... the Harlem hit parade, that's the original predecessor of the, what is now the hot R&B slash hip-hop charts, the Harlem hit parade. So it's very racially coded from the beginning. And on the

other side, what's now the hot country charts, that starts off as hillbilly records. No joke. That was literally called the hillbilly charts. So back, this is like late 30s, early 40s, there was a very clear desire to separate these interracial musical categories. So it's not just an accident or a natural evolution that we now have still these racial associations with country versus R&B hip hop. That is a planned and calculated move that we are living with today. Oh, wow. Okay, we've gone way in the past.

I'm very curious what you're going to do, taking this back to the present. Let's come out the other side with that one outlier currently on the country charts. As of this recording, number 39, this is Kain. Brown, a bi-racial country singer featuring Becky G. And the song is called Lost in the Middle of Nowhere. Lost in the Middle of Nowhere. I think it's kind of another one of these country pop, hip-hop hybrids, right? But what interests me even more is something I think is really cool that this duo did. Kane Brown and Becky G. released a Spanish language remix of this song. And I'm very excited for your reaction when the chorus hits. Let's play this one from the very

beginning. Past our X and five will go. Four lanes to county row. It's that classic reggaeton beat, right? Okay, so to me, this Spanish language regga tone remix signals that despite the fact that Little Nas X was taken off the billboard country charts, I actually think this music is moving back to its roots, back to embracing musical, racial, cultural hybridity. Like, I feel cautiously optimistic about the increasing diversity of the country charts. I mean, if we're talking about starting from a very low count.

From a low, okay, I see. Like, what I'm getting from this discussion is that the people are not where the gatekeepers are at. and that we have some institutional anxiety about people's roles and how they get to participate in saying this is this and this is that. And it's not insignificant that the LNaz-X track was

hashtag country on SoundCloud. You can basically name your own genre. So who gets to claim genre? This obviously gets very sticky when it goes across racial lines. It's very different to say, be in a project of reclamation of a culture that might have been whitewashed than to assert oneself into a culture that one is not a part of. And I think that where a lot of dialogue on,

well, can I call myself a hip-hop artist versus, hey, can anybody call themselves a country artist? There's a false equivalency. And I have no problem. Will Lil Nas X, rightfully reclaiming parts of country music history, which have been erased probably both often, unintentionally, but frequently, intentionally. But when I hear trap beats and country music, I actually feel like there's probably more learning, more referencing, more paying your dues before it's appropriate to make those cross-genre leaps from country artists. hip-hop artist versus hip-hop artist, the country artists.

Charles, I love that. And in the spirit of audiences and creators who are sort of ahead of the gatekeepers, let's end by saying that on our show page, we're going to link to two great pieces exploring that. One is an interview with the creator of the Yehaw Agenda, Bree Melandro, and another is this incredible Twitter thread by Tanya Texas Tucker that explores the deep history of black artists collaborating with country music. stars. Switched on Pop is a production of Vox Media. Our producer is Jillian Weinberger. Our editor and engineer is Brandon McFarland. Our community manager is Sarah Terry and our executive producers, our Nishat

Karawa, and Allison Rocky. You can find more episodes on the Apple Podcast app, Spotify, Stitcher, Radio Public, anywhere you get podcasts, including our website, switched onpop.com. You can find us on social media at Switchedon Pop on Twitter and Instagram. We'd love chatting with you there. And we're going to be back in another week with another episode. Until that, thanks for listening. Convierre your passion in a business with Shopify and bathe records of ventas with the form of pay

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