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It took a few tries at Montero Hill to perfect the art of becoming viral.
"I was doing comedy videos on Facebook, then I went on Instagram, then I jumped on Twitter," said the 19-year-old. "That's where I was really a master. It was the first place where I could become viral. "
But this is not the last case: singing like Lil Nas X, Hill's latest viral feat goes further. His song "Old Town Road" – provocative and whimsical, serious and banjo – continues to snowball, reaching the number 15 Hot 100 this week. His popularity has spread to many platforms Hill already excelled on, including Twitter, TikTok and Facebook. But "Old Town Road" is also skyrocketing in several arenas that Hill has not yet conquered: SoundCloud, Spotify, even an old-fashioned radio. And the rapid rise of the single sparked a fierce debate on the boundaries of gender and race after its first appearance on Display panelThe country map of the publication and the publication then deleted it. The controversy seems to have made it more popular; According to Nielsen BDS, "Old Town Road" was the single most added to the Top 40 radio stations this week. It is currently the second most popular song on Spotify's American charts.
For Hill, the hit represents both an artistic and a commercial breakthrough. "When I started making music, I did what I thought people would want me to do," he says. But the result was often medium-rap SoundCloud Rap. In contrast, "Old Town Road" "was what I was doing I wanted to do, "said Hill.
The storm of Old Town Road cowboys and the gender police controversy partially masked the value of the track itself. Country and trap have been mixing for nearly two decades, from David Banner's "Cadillac on 22's" to Jason Aldean's "Burnin 'It Down," but Lil Nas X has pushed the fusion further. "Nobody has mixed these genres more perfectly than [Hill] just did it, "says Daniel Awad, whose media company Good Luck Have Fun specializes in early identification of viral talent. Lil Tracy and Lil Uzi Green tried to do itand it was funny, but [‘Old Town Road’] is really amazing. Nobody is in this way.
It's impressive, since Hill, who was born in Atlanta in 1999 and grew up west of the city, has only been making music since last May. Like so many teenagers, he was trained "out of trouble".
His artist name was partly decided in advance: "Nas is my Internet alias for a minute now," Hill says. "I just had it at the beginning, Lil Nas because every rapper has a" lil "in front of his name, and it's funny for me. But then, I found myself stuck with it because I had already built a fan base at that time. I added the X [when I was] some songs as a representation of how long [10 years] it should be before I'm at a legendary level. "
Hill's music was initially lagging behind his Twitter prowess. He has accumulated thousands of retweets with jokes height and comments on the absurd lack of gun control in America. Connor Lawrence, Marketing Director for Indify, a company that uses streaming and social media data to identify potential stars early in their careers, first spotted Hill attached to a Drake even. "I did two or three," says Hill.
The situation of music improved in October, when Hill stumbled upon "Old Town Road" when exploring the BeatStars site, which allows budding artists to buy or rent instrumental items. The track was made by Young Kio, a Dutch teenager. Kio called the instrumental "Old Town Road" a "Future-type beat" and Hill found it intoxicating.
7 months ago, I lived at my parents' home, I did not have a car, I was suffering from severe anxiety and was causing me significant daily headaches, had trouble sleeping more. of 3 hours and today, I am still in this situation. here are photos of me photoshopped in gta 5. pic.twitter.com/RHIaU8yp7z
– Nope (@LilNasX) February 23, 2019
He began writing "Old Town Road" from "a place of sorrow". "My parents were disappointed with my leaving the school to make music. So he was like a lonely cowboy. [song]"Explains Hill. "I'll take my horse on the road to the old town / I'll go up until I can not anymore", that is to say, continue climbing, do not stop. I felt that this cowboy lifestyle would fit this song best. "
But as Hill worked, the story of the track shifted to something more triumphant. "I changed the meaning, so I thought the way to the old town would be where you kept winning," he says. "The horse would not have much, but would have something you could use to help you get there."
Hill already had a finely tuned instinct to create things that appealed to the mbades. In the case of "Old Town Road", "I knew how to push the song to get more people to hear it," he says. "I manage an account of the same type on Twitter. I know what my audience is looking for. So I put some potentially funny lines in there.
Hill is not the first to translate other forms of online popularity into a hit pop. "Today's kids are still building a fan base," Lawrence says.. "Then they try to integrate them into their music. We see more and more examples of that, "from Cardi B to Bhad Bhabie to Joji.
But it's possible that no one has made the transition as easy as Lil Nas X. Everything about "Old Town Road" was born and created for the Internet. Young Kio says he found the distinctive role of the beat banjo – from a song by Nine Inch Nails, a band the producer had never heard before – in the recommended section on YouTube. Lil Nas X praised Kio's beat online for $ 30 without ever meeting the producer. While writing "Old Town Road," Lil Nas X made sure to include lines that would interest active users on Twitter. He also took into account the recent release of the hit cowboy video game. Red Dead Redemption 2. (He says he does not think of the craze for "yeehaw" because "it was certainly not at the same level as it is now.") Then he released "Old Town Road", clinically constructed but still funny, back to nature.
"The plan was to put it in as many words as possible until it was effective," he says. "It took a while before this materialized at TikTok, but it worked."
Hill will not appreciate the popularity of his single on TikTok, an app that allows millions of kids to make short clips set to music. Hill says one of these users, @nicemichael_, made a video using "Old Town Road" that started to perform well. His followers created their own clips and a movement was born.
As TikTok took "Old Town Road" and memorized it in a million original tracks, Hill also made it go through more clbadic channels such as SoundCloud and iTunes. "I labeled it" country "on every platform," Hill said. "Country trap does not even exist when you choose which genres to download, and I feel like it's more about the country than the trap."
The track that tears the clbadification caused confusion when it broke the mainstream in March – "Old Town Road" debuted at once Billboard Hot Country Songs and his Hot R & B / Hip-Hop Songs chart, which pushed Hill to start "going round in circles in the house". But the single was subsequently removed from the chart.
Country has adopted hip-hop in some forms for years, but it remains a predominantly white genre. The banishment of Hill, a young black man, worried many observers. Display panel stated that his decision was about sound rather than race – "Old Town Road" "includes references to images of country and cowboys, [but] it does not include enough elements of the country music of today to appear in its current version. "The hip-hop community, of Tyga to Joe Budden, defended Hill. Ski mask the god slump called the expulsion of Hill "Discrimination at its best."
No one was more surprised by the dust than Hill. "I did not expect so much support because I just thought it would be one of those things that no one would really care about," he says. "It's a kind of purist situation, where people see things in a way that they would like to keep." Town Road "beat – again, he's a teenager from the Netherlands – but thinks that Hill "really did [the song] country."
I think if they kept Lil nas x song on the country map, he would have destroyed all the records set by the country's artists. which would destroy the traditional country as we know it.
– Cartier Jazz (@JazzCartier) March 28, 2019
However, when it comes to "Old Town Road", purists lead a losing battle in advance. "Because it sounds like that, people want to put it back in the box," says Phil Guerini, VP of Music Strategy Disney Channels Worldwide and Radio Disney Network, which plays "Old Town Road" on country and pop stations. "The audience clearly says: it's not in a box. This song touched a chord on so many levels. All statistics indicate that this far exceeds any genre.
So a simple about finding the "way you keep winning" continues its long run in the chart. Hill calls "Old Town Road" "a manifestation of herself".
"I do not know if I live in some kind of simulation at this stage," he says. "But let's continue."
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