Lessons Learned: Lil Nas X

Lil Nas X went from a literal broke nobody living on his sister’s couch, to shattering Mariah Carey’s record for consecutive weeks at No. 1 in five months. How did he do it? Talent, yes, but much more than that is his incredible ability to understand the current market and take full advantage of its strengths and weaknesses. Let’s break it down.

Virality and Social Media

Lil Nas didn’t go the standard route of mass content creation for his music. He started on Twitter where, using humor and through networking, grew his following to around 30,000 people. Good, but not quite there. According to Nas himself,

I’d post a funny meme and get 2,000 retweets. Then I’d post a song and get 10. 

So instead of promoting his music through the platform, he stuck to what he was good at- his humor. He then doubled this by creating viral content WITH his song attached. He did just that in 2018 with this tweet.

It had to be short. It had to be catchy. It had to be funny.

He linked his song in the following tweet, and his views began to pile up.

Riding Momentum

Old Town Road grew more and more successful across platforms such as TikTok and Twitter where people continued to use it in viral posts. Nas, in a brilliant move, listed the song as country, catapulting it onto Billboard’s country music charts- this was, again, calculated on the part of Nas as he knew and understood that the country music charts were far less competitive.

In a controversial move, Billboard removed Old Town Road claiming it wasn’t “country”. This sparked outrage and debate across America, driving even more attraction to the song. Two weeks later, and the song made No. 1 overall.

Nas didn’t stop. He lined up remixes with big names like Billy Ray Cyrus, understanding that remixes contributed to a song’s placement in the top charts, a loophole he utilized to full effect as he eventually broke Carey’s record, remaining in the No. 1 spot for 17 weeks.

Game the System

A lot of people like to say “a kid accidentally got lucky”. No. This was no accident.

One of the iconic lines of Old Town Road is “I got the horses in the back.” It’s prominent, catchy, and one of the first things you remember upon first encountering the song in a viral tweet, clip, or on the radio. Knowing this, Nas changed the title of the song on YouTube and Soundcloud to include this line.

He also posted on various subreddits and fora which were ranked on Google so that anyone searching for this particular line would have an easy path to finding the song.

He also made the song shorter than most songs on the airwaves- in another exceptionally insightful move, he did not include the last chorus. Listeners tuning in, upon finishing the song and automatically set to replay it, would listen up to the first chorus of the second play, before realizing  mistake and then skipping to the next song. The genius? One ‘view’ or ‘listen’ counts only if at least 30 seconds was streamed. The length of the chorus? A little over 30 seconds, essentially doubling the amount of streams the song got.

Virality and the road to greatness is not random luck, chance, or a stroke of fate. It’s knowing exactly how to get there, and then doing the work. Lil Nas X is now one of the most known names in the music industry, but the work that he did behind the scenes can’t be overlooked, and can be applied to businesses and startups everywhere.