“I want you to make sure you’re listening to every single thing,” Lil Nas X tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe of his debut EP 7. “You can’t just listen and be on your phone the whole time, because you might miss something.” Of course, everyone being on their phones the whole time is how he got here: “Old Town Road” exploded from homemade online curio to part of our day-to-day lives so quickly, it would be easy enough to dismiss the culture-engulfing success as a novelty or one-off fluke. But the boundary-bursting Atlanta rapper has bad news about that narrative.
Of 7‘s eight tracks, two of them are indeed “Old Town Road”—the omnipresent remix with Billy Ray Cyrus and the original recipe that famously came together for $30. And one more is called “Rodeo,” complete with exaggerated drawl and a Cardi B verse for good measure. But the other five flee the Old West as fast as they can. Single “Panini” borrows the melody of Nirvana’s “In Bloom” for its chorus (Kurt Cobain gets a songwriting credit, but Lil Nas X tells Lowe that he hadn’t heard Nirvana before writing the tune); “Bring U Down” and “F9mily (You & Me)” are rock songs, full stop, thanks in no small part to some help from songwriting powerhouse Ryan Tedder and blink-182’s Travis Barker. But none of this should be a surprise, given Lil Nas X’s ambivalence to the industry hand-wringing over the genre classification of his signature hit. And as far as classifying these new songs—a teaser for a forthcoming full-length LP—he tells Lowe he thinks there’s a common thread. “It’s all music that you want to bang your head to, I guess.”
Other Groove Mag Music News
-
Physically drained and mentally exhausted Eskeel found comfort gazing at the trees; this inspired her new single ‘Trees’
-
Ecouché is the first single from Amai Kuda et Les Bois’ ahead of the upcoming full-length album, EmUrgency!; to be released as a limited edition vinyl recording in May
-
Artist Marta Wiley has released a new single called ‘Diamond Lover’ which has a James Bond 007 feel to it.
-
Madame Kapuscinska is diverse with her sound and style that she fuses different cultures of music into one, as can be heard in her latest EP ‘Eternal’
-
Born in Brooklyn and raised in Saint Albans, Queens, Jesus Muhammed finds that music keeps him alive and loves to explore with his music