Even if you aren't familiar with the name Lil Nas X, chances are you have heard his song Old Town Road.
A blend of country, rap and dance music, the song that sounds as though it should not exist has been hugely successful.
It comes in a few different versions, the first of which exploded in popularity after fans created videos of themselves dancing to it on TikTok, a social media app that allows users to upload lip-syncing and comedy skits in 15-second bursts.
The hashtag #YeeHaw took off and country-style memes saturated social media. Old Town Road shot up Billboard's Hot Country Songs and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs charts.
Lil Nas X, whose real name is Montero Hill, helped its popularity with his entertaining social media presence. His Twitter account, which currently has more than 1 million followers, is a constant stream of memes, self-aware retweets and offbeat videos.
Old Town Road appeared to be unstoppable, even after suffering a blow that only served to propel it further: Billboard removed it from its country chart.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, a Billboard spokesperson said:
Upon further review, it was determined that Old Town Road by Lil Nas X does not currently merit inclusion on Billboard's country charts. When determining genres, a few factors are examined, but first and foremost is 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
'Not white enough' for country?
The decision was met with angry backlash.
A series of Tweets from Shane Morris labelling the move as racist attracted more than 35,000 likes.
"By removing Lil Nas X from the Country Charts, the powers that be (and yes, I'm openly saying the Country music industry operates like the mafia) continue what they want country music to sound like, and more importantly… LOOK like," he said.
"Because this isn't about sound. At all."
"It's not that [the song] wasn't country enough," Rapper Lord Jamar said in an interview with VLAD TV.
"He wasn't white enough, even though black people created country music."
In a statement to Genius, Billboard denied racism played a part in the move.
"Billboard's decision to take the song off of the country chart had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artist," a spokesperson said.
In an interview with Time Magazine, Hill was asked whether he considered Old Town Road as a country song.
"The song is country trap," he said.
"It's not one, it's not the other. It's both. It should be on both."
Country legend backs track
Then Billy Ray Cyrus, of Achy Breaky Heart fame, sided with Hill.
The pair released a remix of Old Town Road, which enjoyed an 11-week reign at the top of the Billboard Top 100 chart and attracted more than 159 million views on YouTube.
But, despite signing with Columbia Records, the 20-year-old Atlanta rapper was at risk of being written off as a one-hit-wonder and a meme lord rather than a legitimate artist.
"Old Town Road wasn't done in a professional studio," Hill told Billboard.
"It was never even mixed and mastered."
Many waited for the release of Hill's new music, unsure of what to expect.
Released on Friday, EP 7 features eight songs, opening with the Billy Ray remix and ending with the original Old Town Road track.
Panini, a reference to early-2000s cartoon Chowder, includes Nirvana's Kurt Cobain (who died in 1994) as a writing credit.
Cardi B features on Rodeo, while Blink182 drummer Travis Barker helped create F9mily (You & Me).
Within hours, the genre salad of an EP hit the number one ranking on the US Apple Music albums chart.
What do the critics say?
Pitchfork writer Alphonse Pierre wrote that while Old Town Road was "pure magic", the follow-up release did not even come close to matching it.
"For the entirety of 7, it's unclear if Lil Nas X actually likes music," Pierre wrote.
"The EP ends up being a set of nothingness, like watching a Kylie Jenner vlog, content made for the sake of justifying its existence."
Allegra Frank at Vox had a kinder take.
"It pulls less from country pop and more from post-grunge and radio-friendly rock — to charismatic, thoroughly modern effect," Frank said.
"To the teens of 2019, 7 EP reflects the cultural moment, and Gen Z's ongoing and inspiring deconstruction of music genres as we know them.
"And for that, I can't help but keep loving Lil Nas X."
The Rolling Stone's Brittany Spanos gave it three out of five stars.
"For being an EP whipped together quickly in an effort to beat the one-hit wonder clock, Lil Nas X's 7 is, above everything, a solid, promising start," Spanos said.
"Above all, the mid-Aughts pop-rock sound of the EP feels reminiscent of early, MGMT-sampling Kid Cudi in its carefully balanced earnestness and playfulness."