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TIME goes COUNTRY with the cover-story going to Lil Nas X and Tim McGraw! The passage that stood out to me in the excellent Lil Nas X piece was: “Old Town Road”–boosted by the fact that Billboard now includes streaming numbers in its chart positions–began a renegade climb up the country charts. Then something shocking happened: the song was banned. In March–the same month Columbia Records signed Lil Nas–Billboard removed “Old Town Road” from the Hot Country songs chart, claiming it did not have enough country elements to belong there. The incident set off a furor, with many saying its exclusion echoed country music’s uneasy racial history: Nashville has been dominated by white artists since the birth of country music, even though that genre has strong roots in black musical styles like blues. Darius Rucker, front man of the hit rock band Hootie & the Blowfish, says he faced resistance because of his race when he started making country music 11 years ago. “I was doing radio tours, and one guy looked me in the eye and said, ‘I love the song, but I don’t think I’ll play it,'” he remembers. “The perception was that the audience wouldn’t accept an African-American singer.” Read the entire piece here.
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