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With all this knowledge in the bank, the rapper knew he needed to make a track that was meme-able – enter: “Old Town Road”.
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He began using Twitter memes to generate buzz around his Soundcloud, and set up hundreds of fake fan accounts to understand the kind of content people responded well to. Speaking to Dazed in 2019, Lil Nas explained that ahead of the release of “Old Town Road”, he was enjoying his “time on the internet more than doing things in real life”. Lil Nas’s career likely wouldn’t have reached such soaring heights if he wasn’t an internet aficionado. To celebrate Montero’s release, Dazed looks back at five times Lil Nas X ripped up music’s rule book, and established himself as one of the most exciting, unique, and important artists of the moment. In the two years since, he’s irrevocably altered music forever through his Extremely Online persona, marketing genius, refusal to cater to his critics ( instead choosing to mock them), and his triumphant position as a gay, Black man traversing the worlds of rap, country, and pop. The rapper, whose real name is Montero Hill, has become a generation-defining artist since his breakout hit “Old Town Road” was released in 2019. But, of course, it’s Lil Nas alone who stands out – his blockbuster debut meeting and exceeding its highly-set expectations. Alongside the record-breaking title track, “ Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”, the album boasts collaborations with some of music’s biggest names, including Miley Cyrus, Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, and Elton John. Montero contains 15 tracks, each of which is a standalone hit. After two years of waiting and three months of teasing, Lil Nas X’s debut album is finally here – and it’s landed with high-budget, cinematic videos for almost every song.