Loading summary
Transcript64 lines
- [00:00]
Lil Nas X
You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.
- [00:04]
Chris Melanphy
Hey there Hit Parade listeners. What you're about to hear is Part one of this episode. Part two will arrive in your podcast feed at the end of the month. Would you like to hear this episode all at once the day it drops? Sign up for Slate Plus. It supports not only this show, but all of Slate's acclaimed journalism and podcasts. Just go to slate.com hitparadeplus you'll get to hear every Hit Hit Parade episode in full the day it arrives. Plus Hit Parade the Bridge, our bonus episodes with guest interviews, deeper dives on our episode topics, and pop chart trivia. Once again to join, that's slate.com hitparadeplus thanks and now please enjoy part one of this hit Parade episode. Welcome to Hit Parade, a podcast of pop chart history from Slate Magazine about the hits from coast to coast. I'm Chris Melanphy, chart analyst, pop critic and writer of Slate's why Is this Song Number One? Series on today's show. Four years ago, at the end of November 2019, Billboard magazine announced its top Hits of the Year. All in all, 2019 was filled with big hits from fresh faces like Swae Lee Lizzo and Billboard, Billie Eilish, I'm.
- [01:37]
Lil Nas X
The Bad Guy, Duh.
- [01:45]
Chris Melanphy
To relative veterans like ariana grande, drake, ed sheeran and justin bieber. But there was no suspense over the years. Pop song it was by a newcomer whose hit had just set an all time Hot 100 record. A fresh face paired with a veteran. And this hit summarized everything that had been happening on the charts all year, all decade maybe since the charts began.
- [02:29]
Lil Nas X
Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to the old town road I'm gonna ride till I came no more, I'm gonna.
- [02:37]
Chris Melanphy
Take my old by newcomer Lil Nas X in a team up with country veteran Billy Ray Cyrus rode roughshod over the charts in 2019. It set records for most weeks atop Billboard's R&B chart, the biggest week of streaming ever, the fastest single to be certified diamond and the biggest chart record of all, most weeks at number one in Hot 100 history.
- [03:09]
Lil Nas X
You can't tell me nothing, Riding on a tractor, Lean all in my bladder, Cheated on my baby, you can go.
- [03:19]
Chris Melanphy
But one chart, Lil Nas X's blockbuster didn't set any records on even with the participation of the Nashville based Billy Ray Cyrus was hot. Country songs Billboard removed Old Town Road from that chart. Lil Nas X fell prey to the same gatekeeping by Nashville that had excluded other country style hits by black artists. To Be sure, Old Town Road was a hard song to categorize. Was it hip hop? Country? R and B Pop? A novelty hit? All of that and more. Lil Nas X was drawing upon a rich tradition of crossover performers mixing elements of many genres and that included 21st century country hitmakers. On top of that, Old Town Road was also the ultimate viral hit, a meme as well as a song. It was the culmination of 21st century Internet culture which was turning plucky self starters into chart toppers. Collision of these trends, rap and country treading on each other's turf and social media turning memes into hits, collided in Old Town Road, a viral hit that made it possible for other cross cultural hits to thrive on the charts. Whether that's other hip hop acts going country. Or country stars singing like rappers. No way.
- [05:42]
Lil Nas X
It was the last night we break up. I see your tail lights in the dust. You call your mama, I call your bluff.
- [05:50]
Chris Melanphy
My new book, Old Town Road, now available in bookstores, explains how all this happened. How a century of genre cross breeding and viral memery culminated in Lil Nas X's record breaking smash. So today on Hit Parade, I'm offering you a preview if you will, an audio accompaniment to my book. I'll walk through decades of predecessors to Old town Road. In 2019, Lil Nas X's debut single felt breathtakingly new. But as the song title says, it also felt old. A milestone at the end of a a very long road. And that's where your hit parade marches today. The week ending April 20, 2019, when Old Town Road by Lil Nas X added vocals by Billy Ray Cyrus set an all time streaming record and was set on a glide path toward 19 weeks atop the Hot 100. The Billy Ray remix made plain what Lil Nas X's original road already implied. A century of American racial and intersectional history had led up to this weird, funny cultural artifact. A goofy two and a half minutes that sounded like a banger was impossible to categorize and rebooted how the charts work. Stick around. This is a song by the alternative rock band Nine Inch Nails called 34 Ghosts 4. It wasn't a hit, and with a title like that, it wasn't meant to be. NIN leader Trent Reznor recorded the Ghosts album under a Creative Commons license in 2008, inviting his fans to to reinterpret its songs. This obscure Nine Inch Nails track became far less obscure in late 2018 when a young black man from Atlanta, 19 year old Montero Lamar Hill, turned 34 Ghosts 4 with the help of a Dutch DJ into this.
- [09:03]
Lil Nas X
Yeah, I'm gonna take my horse to.
- [09:06]
Chris Melanphy
The now etched into pop legend Lil Nas X's Old Town Road inspires so many stories about its unlikely creation, its serendipitous propagation, its unprecedented domination. Five years after it was recorded, and four and a half after it topped the charts, it still holds the Hot 100 record for the longest run at number one, 19 weeks. That's just one of the reasons I've devoted a whole book to this song. My book, Old Town Road is part of Duke University Press's series Singles, in which each book is about an individual song. Previous titles in the series include Joshua Clover's Roadrunner and Eric Weisbard's Hound Dog. If you're familiar with the unrelated book series 33 and a third, which is about albums, you can think of the Singles series as a successor about songs. I cannot cover all the stories about Old Town Road in my book in the space of one podcast episode. And anyway, I would like you to read the book. What I can do is chronicle some of the history that led to this improbably historic song.
- [10:50]
Lil Nas X
Hey, thank you.
- [10:59]
Chris Melanphy
If you were alive and following popular music at all in 2019, you were probably aware of Old Town Road and maybe also aware of the controversy surrounding it. Nonetheless, here are a few facts to keep in mind to refresh your memory about what exactly happened to Lil Nas X's song on Billboard's charts. In March of 2019, the same week that this Jonas Brothers song ucker was number one on the Hot 100, Lil Nas X, still an unsigned artist, saw his song Old Town Road, which was blowing up on streaming services, debut on three Billboard charts, the Hot 100 pop chart, Hot R and B hip hop songs, and most notably, hot country songs. On the country chart, Old Town Road debuted at number 19, remarkably high for a first time single by a newcomer not from the Nashville system. That same week, Luke Combs was on top with his fifth consecutive country number one song, Beautiful Crazy.
- [12:29]
Lil Nas X
Beautiful Crazy. She can't help but amaze me the.
- [12:38]
Chris Melanphy
Way that she Luke Combs hit would wind up spending several months on top of hot country songs because he would no longer be competing with Lil Nas X. One week later, just as Old Town Road was about to leap into the country top three, Billboard removed it, saying in a statement that while Nas's song incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today's country music to chart, unquote. Had Old Town Road not been pulled, it would not only have ejected Luke Combs and reached number one on Hot Country Songs, it would have stayed there for about five months. The removal by Billboard sparked a nationwide debate, including numerous articles in the mainstream media, over Lil Nas X's song, whether it sounded like country music, whether Nas's race was a factor in his song's removal, and whether country music was overdue for a racial reckoning. Ironically, all of this debate only made Lil Nas X's song bigger. And when veteran country singer Billy Ray Cyrus jumped on a remix of the.
- [14:17]
Lil Nas X
Song Hat Down Cross town Living like a rock star Spend a lot of money on my brand new guitar Baby's got a habit diamond rings and Fendi.
- [14:27]
Chris Melanphy
Sports bras Riding down Old Town Road went supernova, not only topping the Hot 100, but setting an all time record for most streams in a week 143 million. The song's streams were so gargantuan that it held the top of the pop chart through all of the spring and most of the summer of 2019, blocking singles by Ed Sheeran, Justin Bieber, Shawn Mendes, and even the mighty Taylor Swift. All of their summer hits peaked at number two. Stuck behind Old Town Road. In June of 2019 when Lil Nas X came out as gay on the last day of Pride month, Old Town Road was still in its 13th week at number one. The 20 year old Montero Hill therefore became the first LGBTQ artist to come out of the closet while having the number one song in America. This was something gay chart toppers from previous generations like Elton John and George Michael, whose struggles with the closet we discussed in a prior Hit Parade episode could only dream of. And Nas's coming out didn't hurt his hit song at all. When Old Town road reached its 17th week at number one in late July, Lil Nas X received a congratulatory tweet from Mariah Carey. Rhode had outlasted the record she set at number one with Boyz II Men back in 1996 on their melismatic blockbuster One Sweet Day. Their 16 week Hot 100 benchmark had held the record for 23 years.
- [16:51]
Lil Nas X
Glorious Shining down on me from Heaven.
- [16:58]
Chris Melanphy
Old Town Road held on for two more weeks, finally giving up the number one spot after 19 weeks on top. Billboard later named it the Top song of 2019. By the way, even after the Billy Ray Cyrus remix, it was never allowed back on the Hot Country Songs chart. So that's a basic summary of Lil Nas X's record setting run. But the foundations of Old Town Road's chart performance and the controversy surrounding the song were built decades before. For the rest of this episode, I want to focus on two aspects of Old Town Road, its mix of genres and its digital virality. Nas's song has many antecedents, and when it comes to blurring the lines between R and B and country, we should probably start here.
- [18:10]
Lil Nas X
You Don't Love Me.
- [18:18]
Chris Melanphy
In 1962, soul pioneer Ray Charles released the album Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music. The concept, according to Brother Ray, was to prove that country and soul music were, quote, the same goddamn thing. Exactly. Unquote. Quote. As Charles saw it, whether played at a honky tonk or on the chitlin circuit, the cultures were aligned at the root. Speaking to music historian Peter Guralnick, Ray Charles said, quote, you take country music, you take black music, it's the same thing, man. Unquote. To make his point for the lp, Charles chose songs that were already familiar to the country audience. For example, you Don't Know Me had been a top 10 hit for country superstar Eddie Arnold in 1956 just six years earlier.
- [19:31]
Lil Nas X
You think you know me well.
- [19:35]
Chris Melanphy
But.
- [19:35]
Lil Nas X
You don't know me.
- [19:42]
Chris Melanphy
Stylistically, Charles was emulating the famed Nashville sound that had swept through country music in the 50s and early 60s. So called country politan records like Patsy Klein's Crazy brought a new sophistication to the genre and were hits on both the pop and country charts.
- [20:07]
Lil Nas X
Crazy I'm crazy for feeling so lonely.
- [20:19]
Chris Melanphy
So for his Modern Sounds album, recorded in Los Angeles, Charles evoked the plush hallmarks of the Nashville sound on tracks like I Can't Stop Loving youg. I Can't Stop Loving youg in particular was very familiar to country listeners. In 1958 alone, it had already been a number three three hit for Nashville legend Kitty Wells. And that same year a number seven hit for frequent country hit maker Don Gibson. But it was Ray Charles who turned the song into a genre crossing blockbuster. His recording of I Can't Stop Loving you, the lead single from Modern Sounds in country and Western music, topped the Hot 100 for five weeks and the R B chart for 10 weeks. Meanwhile, on the album chart, Modern Sounds spent a stunning 14 weeks at number one, longer than any LP in 1962 other than the west side Story soundtrack. Charles's LP spun off multiple hits, including the aforementioned you Don't Know Me, which hit number two, pop number five, R&B, as well as hit covers of the country standards Born to Lose and Careless Love. The LP was so popular, Charles recorded a quick follow up, a second volume of Modern Sounds, which generated hits like Brother Ray's take on the 30s country standard You Are My Sunshine, a number seven pop number one R B hit and the Hank Williams classic your Cheatin Heart, which hit number 29 pop number 23 R&B.
- [22:52]
Lil Nas X
Your cheating heart. Will tell on you.
- [23:04]
Chris Melanphy
You may notice that among these Billboard chart statistics I'm running down, I am not offering any country charts peaks. That's because there weren't any. The singles from modern sounds in country and western music didn't chart country at all. Not even I Can't Stop Loving you, which had been a top 10 country hit for Don Gibson just four years earlier. As with Lil Nas X in 2019, it was taken as a given in Nashville in 1962 that Ray Charles died did not belong in the country format. In fact, Ray Charles's music would not touch Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart until the 1980s. When he finally did, it was mainly in duets with the likes of Willie Nelson and George Jones.
- [24:07]
Lil Nas X
To stick together, keep our story straight.
- [24:12]
Chris Melanphy
We talked about the challenges black artists faced crossing over on the country charts in our Darius Rucker episode of Hit Parade earlier this year. Country mega star Charley Pride was a major exception. But by the 70s and 80s, most country flavored hits by black artists or were relegated to the Hot 100 and the Soul chart, such as the Commodore's twangy hit Sail On, a number four pop number eight R&B single and I.
- [24:47]
Lil Nas X
Don'T mind about the things you're gonna say Lord, I gave all my money and my time.
- [25:00]
Chris Melanphy
What was remarkable in this period was how many funk and R and B acts like the Commodores were rocking cowboy outfits in their photos and videos. The integration of this Western and Southern iconography was largely cosmetic at first. As black country music author Francesca Royster recalls, funksters mixed cowboy style into their looks during the 80s. Rick James and Earth, Wind and Fire. They were all rocking fringe and sometimes cowboy hats on tv. This was black cowboy style without really needing the cowboys. Unquote. In 1983, Boston electro funk band the Johnson Crew took the iconography a bit further on their number 12 R B hit Space Cowboy. Though it was entirely sung and not rapped, Space Cowboy foreshadowed later hybridizations by mixing hip hop style break beats with a tall tale of an outer space outlaw with a laser gun. But the earliest undisputed popular mashup of rap with cowboy culture came in 19844 with Rappin Duke, a novelty single by Sean Brown, a Chicago born LA based comedian. Brown did an intentionally wooden John Wayne impression and the song's refrain da ha da ha, parodying Wayne's stiff movie laughter complemented the song's simple 808 beat.
- [27:19]
Lil Nas X
I'm talking here and now. Later for the Cattle and Race.
- [27:23]
Chris Melanphy
The Rapin Duke video portrayed a cowpoke roaming the range with a boombox, and Brown's rap bars were rife with Saturday matinee Western tropes.
- [27:36]
Lil Nas X
Yay pasa amigos, not a PASA. I see 200 punks well whatcha gonna do? I got two six shooters that'll see me through that' dead and 188 ball.
- [27:52]
Chris Melanphy
Bears for a novelty record Rap and Duke did decently, hitting number 73 on Billboard's R B chart in the spring of 1985. A 1986 sequel called Duke is Back charted 2 a bit higher. Seemingly destined to be a rap lore footnote, Rapin Duke actually holds a special place in the heart of hip hop fans, thanks to the late rapper Christopher Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls or the Notorious B.I.G. in the first verse of his hit Juicy Biggie's wistful 1994 breakthrough single, he reminisces about Rapin Duke.
- [28:40]
Lil Nas X
Remember Rapping Duke daha daha. You never thought that hip hop would take it this far. Now I'm in the limelight cause I.
- [28:46]
Chris Melanphy
Rhyme more in a moment. In the years after Rappin Duke through the late 80s into the 90s, rap's country invocations still centered around hokey cowboy and corn pone imagery. Sir Mix A Lot, who would later become famous for his 1992 smash Baby Got Back, broke his career back in 1986 with the novelty single Square Dance Rap. On it, Mix A Lot, who by the way, hailed from Seattle, proffered his version of Southern line dance calling but undercut its authenticity with with sped up chipmunk style vocals. In 1988, Cool Modi scored with Wild Wild West, a number four R B hit. Its video was replete with cowboy imagery, but the actual song was mostly a straight up New York street rap record. You might say its tales of gunplay were about showdowns on the west side of Manhattan.
- [30:13]
Lil Nas X
I used to live downtown, 120 Ninth St. Convent. Everything's upbeat parties, ball in the park, nothing.
- [30:22]
Chris Melanphy
In 1993, for the soundtrack to the blaxploitation cowboy film Posse, the rapper then known as Intelligent Hoodlum offered the titular single the Posse Shoot Em up, which was certainly hard edged but built around a standard boom bap beat.
- [30:50]
Lil Nas X
Like a chainsaw. The only law they followed was the law of the outlaw the Future.
- [30:54]
Chris Melanphy
A few years later, Cleveland's Bone Thugs in Harmony turned up the twang a bit by sampling Kenny Rogers the Gambler on their Mo Thugs family single Ghetto Cowboy. At least on this track, the country vibes weren't just in the video. Crazy Big Badass Dog wanted up north for the gold that I stole along with some cash. And a year after that, Will smith topped the hot 100 with his own Wild Wild West, a glossy single from his flop film of the same name. Though it bore no direct relation to Cool Modee's prior Wild Wild West. Dee showed up as a featured artist, reprising his 1988 hook. Still, even with the tie in to Will Smith's actual cowboy movie, the track didn't sound very country. It was mostly built from a sample of Stevie Wonder's 70s soul funk classic I Wish.
- [32:12]
Lil Nas X
W w when I bounce into the.
- [32:21]
Chris Melanphy
As the turn of the millennium neared, what began to draw rap closer to country music were a pair of cultural pivots. Rap's center of gravity moved south and hip hop welcomed white performers with a country lean. In the latter category, Robert Richie, AKA Kid Rock is a key liminal figure given his promiscuous genre hopping. Starting as a straight UP rapper in 1990, it took the kid four albums and a couple of format tweaks before he issued his 1998 diamond selling blockbuster Devil Without A Cause, which made him both thrashier and twangier at the same time. The shrieking single Bawit Daba had nothing to do with country music, but it did get the Kid on rock radio and and mtv. Each successive Kid Rock single was a little more country indebted than the last one. Cowboy was a rap rock country mashup with not only Wild west lyrics but some actual pickin and grinning on banjo and slide guitar. Cowboy reached Billboard's mainstream rock top 10 and was the first and arguably last time Kid Rock mixed straight up rap and southern fried twang on a hit song. Then the follow up to Cowboy featured no rapping at all. Only God Knows why was a full on country rock ballad with robotic auto tuned vocals. It became the biggest chart hit from Devil Without a cause, reaching number 19 on the Hot 100 and the top five on the mainstream rock chart. In other words, Kid Rock was pulling away from rap before the promotional cycle for his breakthrough album was even over, but he did help normalize countries relationship to rap. The more pivotal shift came within hip hop itself. As we discussed in our Outkast episode of Hit Parade, Southern rap's shot heard round the world came at the 1995 Source Awards, when Andre 3000 of Outkast closed his acceptance speech before a New York crowd by declaring, quote, the south got something to say, unquote. This prescient statement spurred the relocation of Rapp's locus from the east and west coasts to the south, with Atlanta as its capital, the same city, by the way, that birthed Montero Hill, aka Lil Nas X in 1999. Not long after Outcast put Atlanta on the hip hop map. On Outkast's Seminole Rosa Parks, a number 19 R B hit in 1999, Andre and his partner Big Boy were rapping over porch stomp percussion and country blues guitar with a full on hoedown at the Bridge, featuring harmonica by Andre's stepfather, the Reverend Robert Hodo. Rock Rosa Parks had the most overt pure country instrumentation on a rap single to date, but it wasn't the last. Nappy Roots, a sextet formed in Louisville in the mid-90s, hit paydirt in 2002 with their Platinum major label debut Watermelon Chicken and Grits. Its lead single, Po Folks, featuring soulful vocals from Charlotte R B singer Anthony Hamilton, paired a gentle, country light guitar strum with heartfelt lyrics about rural poverty. It reached number 21 on the Hot 100. But by and large, after Outcast, Southern rap typically meant skittering proto trap beats from the likes of Master P in New Orleans or Nelly, the pride of St. Louis, who put the word country right in the title of his 2000 breakthrough hit, Country Grammar.
- [38:26]
Lil Nas X
Listen to it.
- [38:30]
Chris Melanphy
Southern rap producers and MCs were threading a fine needle when they attempted a crossover. The country audience's melodic requirements were more than a flossy, thumping rap joint could bear. For a Southern microphone fiend like Chris Bridges, AKA Ludicrous, there would be nods to his Atlanta rap heritage. For example, his 2002 hit Saturday Oo Oo featured farm sounds including a crowing rooster. But the rest of Luda's track had to boom like a strip club.
- [39:10]
Lil Nas X
I got a big weed stash pocket full of cash Just seen a big old ass.
- [39:22]
Chris Melanphy
So what about the other approach? Rather than a rapper who tries to cross country, could a rap career be incubated within country music itself? In the 2000s, several acts tried. They even coined a term for it, Hic Hop. But the results for Hic Hop were decidedly mixed. In 2001, Warren Mathis, a white man from LaGrange, Georgia, released his debut album Dark Days, Bright Nights, under the name Bubba Sparks. ALLMUSIC would call Bubba Sparks the redneck version of Eminem. The self dubbed Bubba mixed hick hop lyrics with thumping beats supplied by a black production team that included Timothy Timbaland Mosley, famed for his work with Missy Elliott and Aaliyah, and Organized noise. The Atlanta based team Affordable, affiliated with outkast.
- [40:41]
Lil Nas X
None of us will ever date a model, so let's just cut it loose, ignore the repercussions. If you scared, then just forget what we discuss.
- [40:48]
Chris Melanphy
The video for Bubba Sparks Ugly, produced by Timbaland, featured Bubba and his crew, white and black, splashing around in a muddy pig pen with actual pigs. Ugly charted well at pop and hip hop radio, reaching number 15 on the Hot 106 on the R B hip hop chart. It didn't chart country at all, so on his follow up album deliverance in 2003, Bubba made the country tropes more overt.
- [41:27]
Lil Nas X
So I say.
- [41:35]
Chris Melanphy
The album's title track found Bubba rapping over acoustic guitar licks, and on the album's most acclaimed track, Bubba sampled the banjo and fiddle. Led to See youe Coming Round the Bend by the Yonder Mountains String Band, you can make me smile like you.
- [41:54]
Lil Nas X
Can when you're coming, coming round.
- [42:01]
Chris Melanphy
And he turned it into the banger Coming Round. Deliverance earned strong reviews but lower sales. None of its singles came close to the top 40 on either the pop or R and B hip hop charts. Three years later, what finally brought Bubba Sparks into the top 10 was a dirty south jam called Miss New Booty, sporting a guest refrain from Atlanta crunk kings, the Ying Yang Twins, the catchy but doctrinaire single which hit number seven on both the pop and R B charts and had scarcely any country in it other than a few stray lyrical references. What about launching a rapper from within the belly of Nashville? That's what the quirky mid aughts country hit making duo Big and Rich attempted. Even though they didn't rap, Big and Rich were known for their hybridized party jams like the cheeky Save a Horse Ride. A cowboy. Big and Rich mentored and launched the career of Cowboy Troy, who became the hick hop hype of 2005. Born Troy Lee Coleman III, the towering Texan took the stage in full cowboy drag, a hat, denim, a gingham shirt, rapping in a friendly drawl over country rock arrangements. In his rapping and in his presentation, Cowboy Troy came off as a black George Strait with flow. Cowboy Troy's most impressive achievement was getting on country radio. I Play Chicken with the train hit number 48 on Hot Country Songs, not A big hit, but a hit. Troy's album Locomotive, thanks to its big and rich bonafides, debuted at number two on Billboard's country albums chart and rode the chart for the better part of a year, but it never went gold. Even if country and rap couldn't cross breed their way onto country radio, the two genres kept colliding. In 2004, rapper Nelly's acclaimed single over and Over featured soulful, high lonesome vocals from Nashville megastar Tim McGraw. It reached number three on the Hot 100 and topped playlists at both top 40 and rhythmic pop stations, but it wasn't promoted to country stations. But the most interesting hybrid of the decade took several steps to cross over.
- [46:00]
Lil Nas X
How y' all doing? Yeah, my name's Colt Ford. I got my boy Brantley Gilbert in here with me. We did some country boys from Georgia.
- [46:07]
Chris Melanphy
We're gonna do a little A white rapper from Athens, Georgia named Colt Ford dropped his debut album Ride through the country in 2008. Interestingly, Ford had an arm's length connection to the last major white rapper who'd attempted Hic hop, Bubba Sparks. Ford's producer Shannon Hoochens, a white man who called himself Fat Sean, had worked with Timbaland on Bubba's debut album, Fat Shawn's strategy was to pair Colt Ford with established country singers to court Nashville credibility.
- [46:47]
Lil Nas X
Y' all ain't listening to mo dirt roses what y' all missing on the back row? Do some George.
- [46:57]
Chris Melanphy
The standout track on Ford's 2008 debut was called Dirt Road Anthem, a honky tonk rap whose chorus, sung by Brantley Gilbert, was sweet, melodic and squarely suited for country radio. In his verses, Colt dropped hick hop bars at triple time speed. Only the limited resources of Colt Ford's independent label could explain why the very catchy Dirt Road Anthem wasn't a hit in 2008. Two years later, Dirt Road Anthem was re recorded twice, first by Brantley Gilbert, the original Hook singer, this time with Ford listed as the featured act. Gilbert's version of Dirt Road Anthem sounded very similar to Ford's, with the sung portions just a bit longer. The Gilbert single didn't chart either, but it offered a template for how the song could retain Ford's rap while going fully country. The second 2010 cover of Dirt Road Anthem was the big one by established Nashville star Jason Aldean. Remarkably, Aldean vocalized the whole song himself, singing the chorus and rapping the verses.
- [48:49]
Lil Nas X
I'm turning off a real life driving that's right I'm hitting easy street on my tires. Back in the day, Potts Farm was the place to go. Load the truck up, hit the dirt road, jump the barbed wire, spread the word.
- [49:03]
Chris Melanphy
Aldean's Dirt Road Anthem, issued as the third single from his My Kinda Party album, topped Billboard's Hot Country Songs chart in July 2011.
- [49:14]
Lil Nas X
Ain't it funny how rumors spread like I know something y' all don't know? Man, that talk is getting old. You better mind your business, man. Watch your mouth.
- [49:22]
Chris Melanphy
Aldean's take on the song was so popular, he issued a remix featuring the rapper Ludacris that pushed Dirt Road anthem into the top 10 on the Hot 100. Yep, a dozen years before he became infamous for the vituperative, xenophobic number one hit Try that in a Small Town, Jason Aldean crossed over on the pop chart parts with a song in which both he and Luda were rapping. The path from Bubba Sparks to Colt Ford to Jason Aldean exemplifies how a certain kind of rap became excited acceptable in country music. The further that hip hop veered away from actual rap production and black co creators like Timbaland, the easier it registered on country radio. In essence, a decade later, Lil Nas X would condense this racial identity tussle into a single song. But before we got there, the charts would have to contend with a parallel pop phenomenon. The viral hit and hiccup would evolve further. When we come back, how did the Internet turn former web and couch surfers like Lil Nas X into superstars? And how did the creation of Country Trap and the online Yeehaw Agenda give Hic Hop another spur up the charts? Non Slate plus listeners will hear the rest of this episode in two weeks. For now, I hope you've been enjoying this episode of Hit Parade. Our show was written, edited and narrated by Chris Melanfy. That's me. My producer is Kevin Bendis. Derek John is executive producer of Narrative Podcasts and we had help from Joel Meyer. A quick note about my book Old Town Road. If you're listening to this before mid November, I'm holding reading slash discussions of the book on Tuesday, November November 14th at Housing Works Bookstore in Manhattan on Thursday, November 16th at Taylor & Co. Books in Brooklyn and on Friday, November 17th at the Institute Library in New Haven, Connecticut. Check these places websites for details. I'd love to see you there. Alicia Montgomery is VP of Audio for Slate Podcasts. Check out their roster of shows@slate.com podcasts. You can subscribe to Hit Parade wherever you get your podcasts in addition to finding it in the Slate Culture feed. If you're subscribing on Apple Podcasts, please rate and review us while you're there. It helps other listeners find the show. Thanks for listening and I look forward to leading the hit parade back your way. We'll see you for part two in a couple of weeks. Until then, keep on marching on the one. I'm Chris.