As I write, Old Town Road is apparently the singular most enormous pop parade hit song of all time. Being old as fuck and isolated by choice from almost all aspects of contemporary culture, I only encountered the song whilst rummaging around on YouTube in hope of finding some evidence of rap music not having gone completely down the toilet; and thankfully, here is that evidence.
It's weird and disorientating to realise that I'm this old, and that my opinion of Lil Nas X doesn't make much difference one way or the other. I first heard of Billy Ray Cyrus when my friend Eddy did an impersonation of him in the pub in order to illustrate just how shit was Achy Breaky Heart, which would have been 1992; and Chris Rock's Bigger & Blacker was July 1999, at which point Lil Nas X would have been just three months old.
Three months old…
Anyway, no genre has been so historically ready to drown its own kids as rap, usually because someone dared to poke a toe out beyond the established boundary dividing fake from that which is kept wearyingly real; and it sounds a bit like rock music, or there are too many naughty words and it's not very empowering, or it lacks the lyricism of LL Cool J, or It Takes a Nation of Millions is the greatest rap album of all time, in my humble opinion…
If rap has a problem right now, it's probably due to trap poisoning, adult fans of My Little Pony, and grown men who think growling the word represent for three minutes constitutes a flow. Lil Nas X avoids the pitfalls by sticking to tracks which sound good rather than ticking boxes. If that's a problem, maybe just pretend you're listening to Outkast.
Old Town Road samples Nine Inch Nails and features Billy Ray Cyrus, autotune, and line dancing in the video - a recipe for disaster which has somehow resulted in sheer brilliance. I've now seen a few sneering reviews grumbling about it being a gimmick, just a meme, a novelty record, hardly comparable with Big Daddy Kane or someone else you weren't actually listening to first time round, but it's all bollocks. Old Town Road feels a lot like life in San Antonio, at least in certain respects, and does what it sets out to do to perfection, so I couldn't really give a shit if it's somehow a less important cultural artefact than Bohemian Rhapsody because says you.
Lil Nas's success is in making good use of all the shit which usually ruins a song, not least the autotune which features heavily here. Most often the effect turns an underwhelming vocal into a musical component, and one which sits poorly with whatever else is going on, reducing words to an extraneous embellishment. Our guy on the other hand gets the balance exactly right, using tracks which never get too crowded and yet pack enough of a punch in the equalisation department to sound pretty darn beefy; so the treated vocal has space and nothing gets clogged up in the pipes; and you don't have to call it rap if that bothers you, because it still works, and still does what rap should do.
Ridin' on a horse,
You can whip your Porsche,
I been in the valley,
You ain't been up off that porch.
There are also a couple of pseudo-trap numbers, but this is a bizarrely eclectic set without any two tracks quite sounding alike, and Bring U Down could almost have been on that last Pixies album, if that's any indication. Even Cardi B, of whom I didn't particularly think I was a fan, sounds blistering on Rodeo.
Whatever you want to call it, 7 is a fucking great set, pop music done right - simple without being stupid, moving without simpering, smart and snappy in all the right places, and it bangs like a motherfucker, as I believe is the parlance. My only criticism is that there doesn't seem to be a physical release, but never mind.
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