With his breakout single “Old Town Road” atop the Hot 100 for the 11th straight week, Lil Nas X has released his debut EP, simply titled 7, via Columbia. The seven-track project includes the hit song’s Billy Ray Cyrus remix, as well as Lil Nas X’s new pop punk-leaning single, “Panini,” which features a hook that interpolates Nirvana’s Nevermind song “In Bloom.” (Kurt Cobain received a writing credit.) Boi-1da, OneRepublic’s Ryan Tedder, and Blink-182’s Travis Barker contributed production elsewhere on the EP.
The release caps two-plus months of an out-of-nowhere pop phenomenon that has outlived all reasonable expectations and become, to this grump, one of the more pure sources of joy in recent memory. What began as a $30 beat and became a Tik Tok sensation has since given us delirious elementary school children screaming about lean in their bladder, a properly critical look at how charts work, Nine Inch Nails’ renewed pop relevance, and a thousand cowboy memes. “Old Town Road” now stands as one of the most streamed tracks of all time.
Lil Nas X’s new EP is his first project since his 2018 mixtape Naserati. You can listen to the 20-year-old star’s attempt to resist one-hit-wonderdom below.
