Lil Nas X Lands On The Cover Of Billboard To Reflect On His Meteoric 2019

The meteoric (and right now sustained) success of Lil Nas X in 2019 is and will forever be inextricably tied to Billboard. It's the key element in his origin story, and it's been recounted hundreds of times right now. Yet quickly: Soon after "Old Town Road" hit No. 19 on the Hot Nation Songs chart in March, Billboard removed it, saying it didn't "embrace enough elements of today's nation music."


Then something insane happened: "Old Town Road" hit No. 1 on the Hot 100 and stayed there, becoming the longest-running No. 1 in the chart's 60-year history. There were endless remixes. Lil Nas X won his first-ever awards at the VMAs. And right now, he's on the cover of Billboard's 2020 Grammy preview allocate, seemingly not sweating the colossal expectations per year like 2019 would impose.


"I'm not worried about anything," he says in the interview.


The interview is framed through his futuristic VMAs performance of "Panini," for which he worked at his choreography for week as well as 1/2, and the days immediately after, where Lil Nas X has some time to mirror on his wild year. The rest of his quote about nervousness and expectation reveals an inner zen that belies the artist's drive to keep pushing into new musical realms (as heard on the decidedly not country-trap "Panini").


"As an artist building myself up, I'm going to have continue to create other moments," he says in the interview. However it's not something that I'm furious about or anything. I mean, maybe any time I'm out in public and someone asks for a picture and they're like, 'Where is your hat?'"


One of the most crucial revelations comes from the admission by Lil Nas X, known for his ubercool demenaor, that the first success of "Old Town Road" had him losing sleep and, in writer Joe Levy's words, "caught in a tangle of worry and marijuana smoke." Right now? The future of Lil Nas X may be noticed in what's been his game plan all along: "Keep going up until you actually find something you could profit from, which I did, luckily," he says.


Lil Nas X is known right now. He's got a L.A. Apartment although he's eyeing a home, potentially in Atlanta. And he's trying not to slow down. Once I do step away from the world wide web or the music also long," he says near the end, "it's like I have to slowly get back inside myself to get back inside the groove... [Of] making good content." Can't wait to be able to see what sort of content 2020 brings.


Read the full piece over at Billboard right now.