All I’ve wanted this year is to take my horse to the old town road, over and over again, ’til I can’t ride no more. But prepare yourself for more yeehaw bangers to get obsessed with, now the cowboy-agenda-setting Lil Nas X has released his first country-rock-trap EP, 7.

The rapper, real name Montero Lamar Hill, drops a 19 minute-long record that includes his viral remix with Billy Ray Cyrus “Old Town Road”. The EP also features tunes like “Panini”, and “Kick It”, which are excellent nods to Atlanta’s trap-rap scene. You might think on a first run-through that your Spotify is on shuffle for tracks like “F9mily (You & Me)” and “Bring You Down”, which are out-and-out rock songs, but they’re really there. Lil Nas has also gathered a range of collaborators too – there’s “Rodeo” with Cardi B, and production by Blink 182’s Travis Barker. 

Another curious credit on the “Panini” tune goes to Kurt Cobain as a songwriter, as the melody is gleaned from Nirvana’s “In Bloom”. Speaking to Zane Lowe on Apple Music’s Beats 1 show, he said writing the track got him into the band’s seminal album, Nevermind. He said that the initial interpolation was completely accidental, and when he realised the likeness, he added the credit diligently. “It’s like, I always seen the cover but I never actually listened to it,” he said. “And people was like, ‘Wow, he sampled Nirvana’. I was like... no. It’s like, I didn’t realise I was using almost the exact same melody.”

Cobain and Courtney Love’s daughter, Frances Bean Cobain, granted Lil Nas X the rights to the song, and he has since tweeted his thanks to Cobain.

After releasing a music video “Panini” yesterday, Lil Nas X took to Twitter to request his next mastermind collaboration – chef, restauranteur, and Kitchen Nightmares king Gordon Ramsey. I won’t hold my breath, but going off his latest achievements, we may see Lil Nas X making some idiot sandwiches just yet.

This new EP follows the artist’s self-released 2018 project NASARATI.

You can listen to Lil Nas X’s debut EP, 7, below.