Nicholas Ringskog Ferrada-Noli: Lil Nas X was removed from the leaderboard due to their skin colour

the Country, but were not originally, a genre coded as belonging to only fair-skinned americans. It was in the 1920s when the record industry grew up that the record labels chose to market the ”black music” (blues, gospel, jazz, to african americans and ”white music” (country, hillbilly) to white. The Billboard has had explicit ethnic terms for the leaderboard which is now called the ”Hot R&B/hip-hop songs”: in the 1940s it was called the ”Race records”, in the 1980s, the ”Hot black singles”.

biggest hit single, ”Old town road” with Lil Nas X (Sony), is a countrylåt made by an african-american rapper. It went in on the countrytopplistan and took up to spot 19 before it was taken off of the Billboard, which came to the conclusion that the song can not be classified as country. This is despite the fact that Lil Nas X sings (not raps) on the ride on horses and wear cowboykläder of the finest brand and the instruments that are heard (actually a Nine Inch Nails-sampling) also has clear countryprägel.

the Song has, admittedly, also the heavy base, but it has many hit singles of the traditional countryartister in the day – countrygenren in the last decade have been influenced as much by hip hop as the former has been influenced by rock, nothing strange with it – so there is no argument to disqualify the song from being country. Billboard's decision is about conservatism, but it is hard to ignore that it also deals with racism.

and rap is not new. Bubba Sparxxx made it successfully to 2001, Colt Ford made it even more serious a few years later, and Young Thug opened the door to the countrytrap with ”Beautiful thugger girls” in 2017. Lil Nas X belongs to a new generation – it was through the app Tiktok (social media that is based on home-made music videos) that his song became a mem and a sensation, and instead of a music video he has put up clips from the video game ”Red dead redemption 2” on Youtube. He is not the first african american after, but perhaps he is the first countryrapstjärnan.

Read more musiktexter of Nicholas Ringskog Ferrada-Noli, for example, if Jenny Wilson is staying in the trauma.