It's been a strange and meteoric ride to stardom for Lil Nas X. From blowing up on Tik Tok, to being ostracized and embraced by the country music community, the rapper is still in a daze due to his seemingly overnight success.
In the midst of the rapid rise to fame, Lil Nas X is planning his debut album. He released the title and artwork on Tuesday...
While a release date and further details on the album are scarce, we're finding out more about how the rapper came to fame. One important detail many overlook... where did the beat come from???
Lil Nas X purchased the beat used for Old Town Road for just $30, from an online marketplace called BeatStars.
“I don’t know if I’m living in some type of simulation at this point,” Lil Nas X recently told Rolling Stone. His smash hit only started taking shape in June 2018, when a Dutch teenager named Kiowa Roukema, a.k.a. Young Kio, tossed a trap beat under a banjo loop pulled from the Nine Inch Nails song “34 Ghosts IV,” which he’d found on a whim while browsing YouTube’s recommended section. He uploaded it as “Future type beat” (though it doesn’t really sound like a Future type beat) to a website called BeatStars. In November, it caught the attention of Montero Hill, a.k.a. Lil Nas, who had only been making music for a few months “out of boredom” from his sister’s home in Atlanta, Georgia. Nas recorded a song to the beat, and by the close of the year, the pair’s work was all over the internet, without the two ever meeting.