TikTok is Altering the Music Industry
It’s not just Lil Nas X: musicians are making their songs shorter and more memeable
Montero Lamar Hill grew up in Lithia Springs, Georgia, a small city in the far suburbs of Atlanta, and had a childhood loaded with the challenges typically faced by black boys in the Deep South.
His parents divorced when he was six and Hill spent years living on a notorious housing project called Bankhead Courts. He quit playing trumpet, despite a glaring talent that saw him become first chair at elementary school, due to social pressure. (It wasn’t great for street credit.) A familiar pattern of abandonment emerged and after a year studying computer science at the University of West Georgia, he dropped out.
Until the end of 2018 he was sleeping on his sister’s couch with a negative bank balance and an obsession with Twitter bordering on the unhealthy, posting memes and stanning Nicki Minaj.
All the while, though, Hill had been tinkering with music in private. One night around Halloween last year, he was browsing YouTube and found a beat by a 19-year-old from the Netherlands called YoungKio. He paid $30 to lease it, and spent a month writing lyrics. By December, he uploaded a song called Old Town Road to SoundCloud under the moniker Lil Nas X. The response was muted.
