The life and rise of Lil Nas X, the 'Old Town Road' singer who went viral on TikTok and just won his first 2 Grammys

lil nas x grammys 2020
Rachel Luna/FilmMagic
  • Lil Nas X is one of the most popular musical artists in the world right now with the wildly popular, record-setting song "Old Town Road."
  • The 20-year-old artist rose to fame in 2019 after his hit song first went viral on short-form video app TikTok, and has since set a record for the longest-running song at the No. 1 spot on Billboard Hot 100.
  • He also made headlines when he came out as gay during the height of his viral career, saying he felt "pushed by the universe" to come out during Pride Month in June 2019.
  • Here's everything you need to know about Lil Nas X, who won his first two Grammys last night at the 2020 awards ceremony for his collaboration with country artist Billy Ray Cyrus.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.
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At 19, Lil Nas X decided to drop out of college in the summer of 2018 after just a year at a Georgia university. He crashed at his sister's house while he pursued a music career and posted some songs on SoundCloud that got little traction.

lil nas x
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Source: Rolling Stone

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Then, right around Halloween 2018, Lil Nas X discovered a beat on YouTube from a then-19-year-old Dutch producer named YoungKio. Lil Nas X bought the track for a mere $30 off of a music-licensing website called BeatStars.

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YoungKio, who created the beat behind "Old Town Road." Lil Nas X/YouTube
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YoungKio's beat inspired Lil Nas X to create "Old Town Road," a song that's part-trap, part-country. He told Rolling Stone the song was "basically what I was going through, but in another lens," and that he chose the title "Old Town Road" simply because of how country it sounded.

lil nas x
Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Source: Rolling Stone

"Old Town Road" was officially released December, along with a since-deleted music video featuring scenes from the Western video game "Red Dead Redemption 2." From its beginning, "Old Town Road" was intended to go viral, with catchy lyrics and "quotable lines that people want to use as captions," Lil Nas X told Rolling Stone.

lil nas x
Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Source: Rolling Stone, Billboard

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However, "Old Town Road" was embroiled in controversy before the end of March. Besides the Billboard Hot 100 list, the cross-genre song made it to both the Hot Country and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop lists. But Billboard quietly removed the song from its hot country rankings, and claimed that "Old Town Road" should have never made it there in the first place because "it does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version."

lil nas x old town road
AP Images / Scott Roth

Source: Rolling Stone

However, things took a turn when country singer Billy Ray Cyrus recorded a new verse for "Old Town Road." The potential for a collaboration dates back to December, when Lil Nas X tweeted, "twitter please help me get billy ray cyrus on this." The duo released the remix for the song in April, bringing a more traditional country voice to a song Billboard initially shunned as not being country enough.

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Billy Ray Cyrus and Lil Nas X. Chris Pizzello/Invision/AP

Source: Insider, New York Times

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Shortly after the Billy Ray Cyrus version of"Old Town Road" dropped, the song rocketed to the No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100.

lil nas x
Noam Galai/Getty Images for BuzzFeed

Source: Pitchfork

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The forthcoming music video from Lil Nas X and Cyrus, released in May, was star-studded. Celebrities who appeared in the video — which now has more than 282 million views on YouTube — include Chris Rock, Vince Staples, Diplo, and YoungKio, the original "Old Town Road" producer.

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Lil Nas X/YouTube

Watch the music video for the "Old Town Road" remix here:

 

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As the "Old Town Road" remix remained at the top of the charts, Lil Nas X doled out more remixes of the song featuring Diplo, rapper RM of K-pop group BTS, Young Thug, and Mason Ramsey of "Walmart yodeling kid" fame. Lil Nas X has floated hints for potential remixes with Dolly Parton, Mariah Carey, and Megan Thee Stallion.

lil nas x young thug mason ramsey
From left to right: In the music video for one of the "Old Town Road" remixes, emoji depicting Billy Ray Cyrus, Lil Nas X, Young Thug, and Mason Ramsey. Lil Nas X/YouTube

Source: Popsugar

However, one collaboration Lil Nas X didn't want to do was with presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg. Lil Nas X was invited to appear at a BuzzFeed event alongside Buttigieg to recite the lyrics for "Old Town Road," but the singer reportedly refused to participate in order to avoid seeming like he was endorsing the candidate. Buttigieg later dropped out of the event altogether.

pete buttigieg
Democratic 2020 U.S. presidential candidate Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who is gay and married to another man, addresses the Capital Pride LGBTQ celebration at the Iowa State Capitol in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S. June 8, 2019 Reuters/Brian C. Frank

Source: Business Insider

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During Pride Month, Lil Nas X came out as gay, and tweeted he had "made it obvious" with the cover art for his EP. "I never would have done that if I wasn't in a way pushed by the universe," he told Time. "In June, I'm seeing Pride flags everywhere and seeing couples holding hands — little stuff like that."

lil nas x
Reuters/Monica Almeida

Source: Time

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By the end of July, "Old Town Road" became the longest-running No. 1 song in US chart history. Its 17-week run put the song ahead of previous record holders "Despacito" by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee, and "One Sweet Day," a Mariah Carey-Boyz II Men collaboration from 1995.

lil nas x
Andrew Wendowski for imageSPACE/MediaPunch /IPX

Source: Pitchfork

Lil Nas X landed on the cover of Time magazine in mid-August. "Everything lined up for this moment to take me to this place," he told Time. "Not to sound self-centered, but it feels like I’m chosen, in a way, to do this stuff."

lil nas x TIME cover
TIME

Source: Time

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Although "Old Town Road" was the bonafide song of the summer last year, the track lost its spot at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 after a 19-week run. "Old Town Road" was dethroned by Billie Eilish's "bad guy." Lil Nas X congratulated Eilish on Twitter, writing, "u deserve this!!"

billie eilish
Billie Eilish. Reuters/Henry Nicholls

Source: Pitchfork

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In August, Lil Nas X performed for around 45,000 Amazon employees in Seattle to celebrate the company's Prime Day. Photos from the event show Lil Nas X posing with Katy Perry, who also performed, and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos. On Instagram, Lil Nas X posted: "i am the now the new owner of amazon and i stole katy perry's dog."

jeff bezos
Alex Wong/Getty Images

Here's the photo that Jeff Bezos posted from the Prime Day event, which shows the Amazon CEO sporting Lil Nas X's graffiti-laden jacket.

... and I had some fun with @LilNasX and @KatyPerry backstage.

A post shared by Jeff Bezos (@jeffbezos) on Aug 21, 2019 at 12:53am PDT

Source: Business Insider

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The artist's success earned him 6 nominations at the 2020 Grammy Awards. He took home 2 wins: best pop duo/group performance and best music video, both for the "Old Town Road" remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. Billie Eilish's "bad guy," which unseated "Old Town Road" on the Hot 100, won song of the year and record of the year.

lil nas x grammys 2020
Rachel Luna/FilmMagic

Source: Insider

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