After ‘Old Town Road,’ Is ‘The Kick Drop’ Next?

Love it or hate it (there doesn't seem to be much territory in between), Lil Nas X's "Old Town Road" introduced the genre of "country trap."

With the song's massive success, it was only a matter of time before other sound-a-likes started gaining steam, and the latest candidate is Nate Conner's "The Kick Drop." The hashtag #thekickdropchallenge originated on the app Tik Tok and is in its infancy with just over 300,000 views.

The multi-genre pop ditty encompasses similar aspects of "Old Town Road" that made it a "country" crossover, adding a banjo sound and a backwoods lyric — "drop low, let the boots show" — currently qualifying it as country music in the genre's ongoing evolution.

The kicker (no pun intended) is the song also has a dance, explained by artist Nate Cooper on his YouTube channel. Reminiscent of other songs with gimmicky wiggles such as the "Cha Cha Slide," "Cupid Shuffle" or even Billy Ray Cyrus' "Achy Breaky Heart" (which helped launch the country music dance craze in the '90s), the "The Kick Drop" has a similarly easy line dance to go with it. So if this song takes off, does that mean "Old Town Road" really marked the next chapter of country music?

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Not so fast: Don't forget that country star Maren Morris teamed with Zedd for the massive pop crossover hit "The Middle" over a year before "Old Town Road" was ever released, further easing the label of country music into the pop realm. However, it's worth noting that when Taylor Swift released her "pop album" 1989 in 2014, it was considered a departure from her country roots. But is "Shake it Off" or "Blank Space" really that different than "The Middle"?

Cam also recently paired with Diplo for the pop-co collab "So Long" — will that be considered country? Does it even matter? With the advent of on-demand streaming and new social media platforms such as Tik Tok, genres seem to be becoming less important by the day, but what does that mean for the future of country music?

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