#NAS COMPOSURE FULL#

Luckily, the two producers had a separate folder containing “out-there instrumentals,” including the skeleton of “Panini.” Lil Nas X quickly warmed to the rubbery beat. “The first thing we played him was the intro guitar lick to ‘Rodeo,'” adds Take a Daytrip’s Denzel Baptiste. “He made it clear he didn’t want to be the ‘Old Town Road’ guy that only does country music,” Take a Daytrip’s David Biral says.

#NAS COMPOSURE FULL#

Take a Daytrip came to the rapper with a folder full of country beats. The mix of styles was clearly the goal: Though Lil Nas X had never been in a real studio session before “Old Town Road” took off, he wasn’t afraid to direct the creative process. It’s all over the place, but it’s never “Old Town Road, Part 2” (except for the fact that “Old Town Road,” and its remix, are both on the project). There are multiple detours into pointedly retro rock - a Nirvana interpolation, production from Travis Barker of Blink-182, and guitar on “Rodeo” that suggests the Replacements’ “The Ledge.” But “C7losure (You Like)” is something else entirely: Abaz and X-Plosive, two German producers who sketched the track two years ago, tell Rolling Stone they “had Drake on our minds, something really melodic.” Elsewhere on 7, you’ll hear whistles, a string section, a saxophone, and quick transitions from programmed instrumentation to live playing. It’s bristling and obstreperous rap one moment, crisp and carefree pop the next. If Adele had gone straight from ‘Hello’ and put out her second single, it’s called ‘Goodbye’… if it was just an answer to ‘Hello,’ it would never connect in the same way.” Trying to follow it with anomaly part two, it never works. “I’ve been lucky to have a few in my career that are just anomalies. “You can’t use ‘Old Town Road’ as a roadmap for another song,” he says. Tedder, who produced “Bring U Down,” felt similarly. “Wes knew he couldn’t put a project together with the same song. “It was about bringing in producers who would do more than what would everyone would expect - just start a loop and throw in an 808,” says James Supreme, an A&R at Universal Music Publishing Group who helped place Lil Nas X in sessions with the producers Take a Daytrip (“Panini,” “Rodeo”) and Bizness Boi (“Kick It”). The key for 7, Lil Nas X’s just-released debut EP, was to ignore the hit - and to give this artist the same opportunities for in-studio trial-and-error that would be afforded to any promising 20-year-old who didn’t have the biggest song on the planet.

The fear, then, is simple: “It’s only downhill from here.” Everyone likes a growth narrative, but it’s impossible to establish an upward trajectory when you start at the top. That means “Old Town Road” is also an albatross for a new artist, a hit so big that it threatens to make every subsequent effort look slight in comparison.

Nas composure