The recent fracas over Lil Nas X has proven that country music's problems with Black people have yet to cease.

His hit song Old Town Road skyrocketed him into international stardom after its release in 2018. After going viral in 2019, the song debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart at No. 19.

But Billboard faced backlash when they removed the hit song from the country charts, claiming it was not a country song. Many said this had implicit tones of racism, which Billboard denied in a statement to Rolling Stone at the time.

"When determining genres, a few factors are examined, but first and foremost is a musical composition. While 'Old Town Road' incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today's country music to chart in its current version," Billboard said in a statement.

Another spokesperson later told Genius that their "decision to take the song off of the country chart had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artist."

Dozens of music critics called the move racist considering its popularity and country melody. The conversation around the song reignited the long history behind the erasure of Black country artists and the Black people who lived in the south and west during the 1800s.

Dr. Dina Bennett, the senior curator at the National Museum of African American Music in Nashville, told The Washington Post that much of country music originates from slaves who were forced to perform for their masters using instruments brought over from Africa. She highlighted the akonting, which comes from West Africa and is a predecessor to the American banjo.

"The erasure of African-American presence from country music is compounded by the erasure of African-Americans from the history of the American west," wrote Jake Iverson Ruckus for the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.

"Though country music was largely born in the south, it’s usually focused on the western ideal, obsessed with open plains and big skies. Because our cultural conception of the west is dominated by white points of view, that has trickled down into the music written about it," he added.

Linda-Martell

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