In the debut of Lil Nas X’s country hit “Old Town Road,” there was rejection from the country genre that I would like to address.
The definition of country music comes from a combination of one or more instruments, stories, allusions, and vocal range structures. I know already I can visualize tumbleweeds, horses, and cowboys when thinking of country music’s origins. What I do not think of are Black cowboys; that is uncomfortable to me because it's not that there weren't any but that they just weren’t represented in film. Lots of artists like Spike Lee, Ava Duvernay, Ryan Coogler, and Jordan Peele are working to fix what Hollywood was and through their work they have shown the world what it should have always been. They have been successful and their success shouldn't be subcategorized into Black Hollywood-just Hollywood.
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We see the same dishonor, where artist Lil Nas X was only acknowledged and categorized by country charts once Billy Ray Cyrus joined him on the song. Formerly, the song was classified as "country rap" which we can credit Nelly for building this bridge leaving room for inclusion and diversity as seen in today’s music. But, Nelly’s efforts were still subcategorized even though the style of music was still considered country. Just like the separation of history and Black history, the first response is to reject the collaboration of any and all other cultural influences.
The reality is, Lil Nas X’s original version of "Old Town Road" was kept separate because of America's long, dark history of taking from Black culture and considering Black people as less than. We've yet to have a true chance at changing this and begin to heal and reconstruct our society to reflect majority interests and opinions. We cannot even agree on one account of actual history, which are real events that some groups suffered more than others. It is strange to me that we prefer to distinguish between intersectionality related topics when we could just recognize the influence and long term effects of our past.
Classifying something by anything other than what the author intended is not only unjust but in a way discredits the art. Black culture is an area that is constantly being appropriated, but oddly enough we are constantly facing rejection when we enter positions that are not considered traditional for us. We can all be agents of change, but we must first come to terms that all of the hatred in which our country was built on is not going to positively affect any of us.
