In hip-hop’s ongoing march to dominate the planet, two recent setbacks made huge headlines.
Pablo Dylan – yes, he’s the son of Bob “The God” Dylan – decided to switch teams and ditch his burgeoning rap career to become, get this, a folk rocker!
Meanwhile, Billboard told rapper Lil Nas X to get the hell of Dodge: Three weeks after his song “Old Town Road” debuted at No. 19 on Billboard’s Hot Country chart in mid-March, the chart-meisters decided it wasn’t country enough and gave it the boot — presumably one of those pointy-toed, shit-kickin’ boots that Porter Wagoner would pair with his Nudie suits. (You Millennials who believe rappers have a monopoly on bling, just google “Porter Wagoner and Nudie Cohn”).
Both the Pablo and Lil Nas X incidents point to this self-apparent truth: It’s hip-hop’s world – we just live it.
Pundits were quick to tell Pablo that, just like Flounder in “Animal House”, he fucked up: “Pablo! You dumb-ass! Now you’re going to have to compete with your Granddaddy!” But Pablo’s a shrewd dude who made the right choice. Yep, Bob wrote some cool tunes a few thousand years ago – about the same time as that Shakespeare dude – and yes, Bob recently got one of those Nobel Prize thingies in the literature category for his song lyrics.
Yet we all know, as white-boy quasi-rapper Beck pontificated way back in 1996, hip-hop is “where it’s at.” It’s no news flash that this is still true 23 years later: In just the time it’s taken you to read this column so far, there have been 63,477 folks – Tibetan rickshaw drivers, Madagascar lemur herders, Norwegian ski jumpers, Mayan shamans and three sexagenarian Wall Street bankers – who have downloaded some beats, picked up a microphone and entered the rap game. During that same time, 18 more septuagenarian folk-rockers have passed away, bringing their endangered species down to just 123 left in the world. Pablo Dylan faces far less competition to get his music heard in the folk-rock genre.
And how was I able to compile such accurate statistics on the popularity of today’s music genres? I’ve been conducting a scientific poll for the past few decades: Whenever I’m driving and stop at a red light, I roll down my windows and check out whatever sounds are spewing from the cars around me. The last time I heard an ass-ripping rock guitar riff was Oct. 23, 2003 – Led Zep’s “Out on the Tiles” it was, blasted by a 1970s hippie (as opposed to the ’60s variety).
I’m not saying that Cage the Elephant, the Black Keys and other modern rock bands are not creating worthy music. I’m just saying hip-hop is the 800-pound gorilla – yes, that gorilla that sits anywhere he damn well pleases.
Which is why the country powers shit their pants when they heard Lil Nas X – a black guy, by the way — drawlin’ about saddling up his horse and then proclaiming “Can’t nobody tell me nothin’ ” over a molasses-like banjo and beats. It’s one thing to have white-guy hick-hop artists such as Colt Ford and Bubba Sparxxx sniff around the fringes – the outer, outer fringes – of Garth Brooks-ian country. It’s one thing to allow tame quasi-rapper Cowboy Troy, an African-American, closer to the fold — after all, even old-school country had its Charley Pride. It’s one thing for Nelly to “Cruise” with Florida Georgia Line.
Meanwhile, underground, West Virginia redneck rapper Mini Thin and his video “City Bitch,” with its white girls twerkin’ in Confederate-flag bikinis, will never be allowed within a thousand miles of Nashville’s country club.
But Lil Nas X had the audacity to craft a catchy track that name-checks tractors, cowboy hats and Wrangler jeans over a slow-brewed, down-home, sittin’-on-the-back-porch groove – a chill hip-hop successor to Charlie Daniels’ “Long-Haired Country Boy.” Both Charlie and Nas X have the same philosophy: “You don’t like the way I’m livin’, just leave this country boy alone.”
Yet the country music mafia, Billboard and-or some other deep-state Nashville operative booted Lil Nas X and his hit ditty off the country charts.
The go-to theory is that country music – a staunchly conservative, traditionalist genre that’s still even a bit leery about the bombast of white-boy “bro country” – can tolerate only so much outsider incursions: “OK, we’ll let Nelly hop on the bus to Nashville this time.” But you can just hear those Nashville fat cats thinking: “However, if we allow the virus of hip-hop in the door too often, soon it’ll infect the entire industry! Look at the pop charts! It’s all rap!”
Still, you gotta wonder if all the melanin in the skin of Lil Nas X had something to do with it – if this incident is a racial matter because, well, race matters, in a negative way, to some folks.
There’s a grim joke somewhere in the Lil Nas X saga, and its punchline is Public Enemy’s “Leave This Off Your Fuckin’ Charts” from their 1990 masterpiece, “Fear of a Black Planet.” As soon as I find that joke, I’ll get back.
