Montero Lamar Hill (born April 9, 1999), known professionally as Lil Nas X, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter from Atlanta, Georgia. He is best known for his country rap single “Old Town Road”, which achieved viral popularity as part of the “Yeehaw Challenge” on the video sharing app TikTok. “Old Town Road” peaked at number 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and was controversially removed from the Hot Country Songs after debuting at number 19.
Lil Nas X began his career as an internet personality on Twitter. He gained popularity through his Nicki Minaj fan account,”NasMaraj”, named after Minaj’s given name, “Marat”, and rapper, Nas. In 2015, Lil Nas X became known for his viral tweets and other fanpage, “FactsAboutNM”. In 2017, “NasMaraj”, was known for its interactive “scenario threads”. These threads were popularized on Twitter with the dashboard application TweetDeck.
The threads were based on surviving a “School Shooting” which can be seen on his other account, “viewsfromnas”. Through these accounts, Montero accumulated a large following and, with the encouragement of his followers, began making music.
He began uploading songs to SoundCloud in 2018. On December 3, 2018, he released the country rap song “Old Town Road”. The song went viral in early 2019 due to the “Yeehaw Challenge” meme on media app TikTok. “Old Town Road” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 83 and later peaking at 15. It also debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart at number 19 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at 36, being controversially removed from the former in March 2019.
Country music star Billy Ray Cyrus has since supported Lil Nas X’s “Old Town Road” in a tweet, and he is a featured vocalist in a remix of the song released in early April 2019.
Sources: Last.fm, Wikipedia
