Author: Jorge Ramos

The meme that was the great song ‘Old Town Road’ didn´t save the album from the critics who went off with the EP 7 released recently by the 20-year-old Atlanta rapper. It was easy to predict that this could happen, especially after comparing what ‘Old Town Road’ had been, and how they would be compared to the other tracks on the album.

The EP 7 has, ironically 8 songs in it, with the ‘Old Town Road’ remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, but that’s not the only feature in the album, Nicki Minaj, who Lil Nas X is a huge fan, starred in the song ‘Rodeo’.

How did this all start?

Let’s take it back to the start, the original version of ‘Old Town Road’ was first released on December 2018, and turned into a meme becoming viral during early 2019, mainly in the short video app, TIKTOK, where people would basically make videos called the ‘Yeeehaw Challenge’.

Even famous baseball star Alex Bregman, from Houston Astros, who are top in the current odds to win the World Series, used the song as his walk up tune. Two other baseball athletes, Delino DeShields and Jake Bauers did the same, which shows how popular it got.

The song totally blew up after this and scaled rapidly from the #83 on the Billboard Hot100, to the first place. Same happened with the Hot Country Songs Top, until in March the song was removed. In various occasions, the organization had to come out and clarify the reasoning behind the removal.

The problem with Billboard turned out to be one of the most important moments for what would come afterward, Billy Ray Cyrus, read about the situation and tweeted about it, expressing his support for the young rapper. Later we got the precious remix of ‘Old Town Road’, in which we see featured the Country music star.

7 EP

After this the rapper had to take the chance and launch an EP, thing that he did, and as soon as he announced most of us where wondering the same question everyone else thinks when a artist had just dropped a banger song. ‘Will they survive to this?’ and Lil Nas X seems to have succeeded on it, with the people of Metacritic giving it a 56 out of 100. If it were a test he’d barely had approved.

The album has 8 songs with quite a variety of genres, from the country rap ‘Old Town Road’ that will remain in our playlists because it is a great song, and because it is a great meme song. It was the song that brought Lil Nas X to where he is now, passing through incredible collaborations like ‘Family’, produced by Blink 182’s Travis Barker, in which he obviously plays the drums, and acts as background voice in this Rap-rock/pop-punk delight of a song.

In ‘Panini’ the second track he interpolates parts of Nirvana’s ‘In Bloom’, although he hadn’t heard the band just shortly before the recording of the song. In a forward jump, we get to ‘Rodeo’ starring Cardi B, a song with the strings that could take him close and back to the country sound he went for in his number one hit.

Another crazy and really enjoyable collaboration came in with ‘Bring U Down’ theme produced by Ryan Tedder, OneRepublic’s Frontman in which he also performs a bit of singing. The song is actually about someone aiming to bring someone down exposing or leaking every little detail when that someone is on the rise.

In ‘C7ousure’ we have Nas clearly telling someone he loves that they’re holding him back, that he needs to let them go in order to grow. He clearly says it in the chorus, “I want I need/to let go/use my time to be free/It’s like it’s always what you like.”

The record finishes off with the original version of ‘Old Town Road’, and is fair to say it’s a pretty good album. The problem is actually something that is probably good for Lil Nas X: his ability to perform and play with so many genres. Although it is great, feels like he’s not totally sure of what to do with himself. We can only wait and see what the Atlanta cowboy is planning now.