A thirty-dollar beat sale from a stranger produced a record-breaking pop hit

Evidence

One day, looking to challenge himself creatively, Roukema experimented with an unlikely sample: “Ghosts IV–34,” a 2008 track from industrial pop group Nine Inch Nails. Roukema had never heard of them. Ignoring warnings from friends against using this folky banjo hook, he added a trap beat under it and uploaded the result to BeatStars as a “Future Type Beat,” in reference to the Atlanta trap star Future. … Weeks later in Atlanta, nineteen-year-old Montero Lamar Hill, who ran a Nicki Minaj stan account on Twitter and recorded as Lil Nas X, purchased Roukema’s beat for thirty dollars. He spent an additional twenty at a local studio to record a country-inflected, singsong rap over it. A month later Lil Nas X released it as “Old Town Road.” — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 622