The paint is barely dry on Lil Nas X‘s record-breaking run with “Old Town Road,” which topped the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart for an unprecedented 19 weeks. But on Thursday, he released a new video for his follow-up single, “Panini.” Will it climb to the same heights as his breakthrough No. 1 hit? Watch it above.
Unlike his Old West-set “Old Town Road” video, Lil Nas X goes back to the future with “Panini,” in which he plays an artificial intelligence following a girl through a science-fiction landscape — cyber-stalking, literally — until she jumps out of a plane to get away from him. This follows his equally futuristic performance of the song at the MTV Video Music Awards, but will it boost him to the top of the charts?
That remains to be seen. “Panini” has already been charting for 10 weeks, so far peaking at No. 16 on the Hot 100, but the new streams powered by the music video could give him a big bump in the coming weeks. It already had more than a million views on YouTube after four hours, and by the time you read this it will surely be well north of that. His “Old Town Road” video has been watched more than 300 million times as of this writing.
Streaming has been where Lil Nas X has especially dominated. “Old Town Road” holds the record for the most streams for a song in a single week (143 million). It actually has the top three streaming weeks of all time. And he helped fuel those streams with additional remixes and videos for the song. So perhaps he’s just a couple of different “Paninis” away from another chart-topper. Someone get Billy Ray Cyrus and Diplo back on the line.
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