Page 73 - 1619 Project Curriculum

August 18, 2019

Lil Nas X, left, and Billy Ray Cyrus perform in Indio, Calif., in 2019.

fantasy. The song snowballed into warrant translation, but let’s be Cyrus, performed his on a remix millions, and some of those people

a phenomenon. All kinds of people thorough, anyway: The song is too with Lil Nas X himself. found — somehow — deliverance in

— cops, soldiers, dozens of dapper black for certain white people. The newer version lays Cyrus’s the power of music. Lil Nas X has

black promgoers — posted dances But by that point it had already casual grit alongside Lil Nas’s lack- descended from those millions and

to it on YouTube and TikTok. Then captured the nation’s imagination adaisical wonder. It’s been No. 1 on appears to be a believer in deliver-

a crazy thing happened. It chart- and tapped into the confused thrill Billboard’s all-genre Hot 100 singles ance. The verses of his song flirt with

ed — not just on Billboard’s Hot of integrated culture. A black kid chart since April, setting a record. Western kitsch, what young black
100 singles chart, either. In

really merged white music
hadn’t
with adorable
And the bottomless glee over the
internetters branded,
April, it
Photography by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images Country Songs chart. A first. And, thesis. The mixing feels historical. way but as proof of what a fine mess once the song reaches its chorus

showed up on both its Hot R&B/

whole thing makes me laugh, too

idiosyncrasy and a deep sense of

with black, he’d just taken up the
history, the ‘‘yee-haw agenda.’’ But
American birthright of cultural syn-
— not in a surprised,
Hip-Hop Songs chart and its Hot

yacht-rock

for now at least, a last.
(‘‘I’m gonna take my horse to the
instance, in the song’s

Here, for

this place is. One person's sign of

progress remains another’s symbol

Old

The gatekeepers of country
sample of a Nine Inch Nails track
Town Road, and ride til I can’t

no more’’), I don’t hear a kid in an
of encroachment. Screw the history.

radio refused to play
is a banjo, the musical spine of the

the song; they

didn’t explain why.
minstrel era. Perhaps Lil Nas was
Then, Billboard
outfit. I hear a cry of ancestry. He’s

my land.

Get off

determined that the song failed

Four hundred
a westward-bound refugee; he’s an

too
American. Other country artists
years ago, more
to ‘‘embrace enough elements of
Exoduster.

And Cyrus is down for
than 20 kidnapped

Africans arrived

of the genre seemed to sense this.

music to chart in

White singers recorded pretty trib-

today’s country

its
current version.’’ This doesn’t

and put through hell.
This land is their land.•
Twenty became

utes in support, and one, Billy
Ray
67 in Virginia. They were put to work the ride. Musically, they both know: