Rascal

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About

"Rascal" is a song by hip-hop artist RMR which went viral thanks to its striking video and controversial use of "Blessed the Broken Road," a song popularized by country band Rascal Flatts, which resulted in a struggle to keep the video online.

Origin

On February 25th, 2020, Elevator Mag^[1] premiered the song. It features singer RMR singing to the tune of Rascal Flatts' "Blessed the Broken Road" with different lyrics and significant autotune. The original upload of the video was taken down by UMPG publishing on copyright grounds, but not before it gained over 800,000 views.^[2] It was reuploaded by The New Wave on February 27th, gaining over 700,000 views (shown below).

And every sleepless night
Led me to where I am
Bitches that broke my heart
They became hoes that scam

Spread

The video was a quick viral success, gaining hundreds of thousands of views in less than 24 hours. Rolling Stone^[3] remarked, "From its juxtaposition of country music with hip-hop aesthetics (Lil Nas X, Post Malone) to the anonymous artist arriving seemingly out of nowhere (The Weeknd, H.E.R.), “Rascal” seemed engineered for viral success."

The song was quickly remixed by Ryan Hemsworth, gaining over 5,500 plays on Soundcloud (shown below, left). Showtime's Desus and Mero held a segment about the song on their program (shown below, right).

The song also received high praise from celebrities including Timbaland,^[4] who said of the rapper To me, it’s the most exciting thing I’ve heard in music in a long time. He’s my guy, free RMR." #FreeRMR was a hashtag which spread after YouTube took down the original post of the music video.^[5]