Forbes contributors publish independent expert analyses and insights. I write for, and about, the up-and-coming musician. In the hip-hop world, one could argue that the days of artists spending ...

That Lil Nas X spent all of $30 to purchase the beat for “Old Town Road” has become the stuff of music-industry legend. As the story goes, a 19-year-old Dutch trap producer, Kiowa Roukema, who goes by ...

No one saw Lil Nas X coming. His race to ubiquity came impossibly quickly, and it’s a rare instance of an artist’s industry story — the making-of chronicle of an underdog star — becoming to wide ...