He came to international attention for his country rap single Old Town Road, which first achieved viral popularity on the Micro platform video sharing app Tic Tac in early 2019 and was Diamond certified by November, the same year the rapper had opened up about overcoming his internalized homophobia on HBO's The Shop for Me, The Cool Dude with the song On top of Everything to Say this any other time, I'm doing this for attention in my eyes, but if you're doing this while you're at the top, you know it's career and it's showing it doesn't really matter, I guess, he said.