The longest running number 1 in Billboard Hot 100 chart history is based on a beat by a 19-year-old from Purmerend, who sold it via music website Beatstars.com.

Old Town Road by rapper Lil Nas C and featuring country star Billy Ray Cyrus, has been top of the listing for 16 weeks, and owes its success to the beat put together by Dutch youngster Kiowa Roukema, better known as YoungKio.

Kio realised the beat had been picked up by the rapper when he saw memes of people dressed in cowboy attire on the video-sharing app TikTok with his instrumental playing in the background, Billboard magazine reported.

He had been selling his beats through the the website, but had no idea who had picked it up. Doing some digging on social media, he discovered his beat had been transformed into a fully-fledged single and tracked down Nas on Instagram.

‘I told him ”Yo, bro. This shit is fire. I wanna help promote it. If you can just put produced by YoungKio in the title, this will help me grow as well”,’ Kio told the magazine.

‘So he was cool with it. That’s how it just went. We didn’t really have any connection. It was just him buying it from my beats store and me finding out after.’

Can you imagine how i feel right now? 🥺 https://t.co/52wEVL7Hdp

— ~Kio (@YoungKio_) July 22, 2019

Since then the teenager, who started making beats in 2016, has signed to proper management and other artists have reached out to him, looking for ideas.

Kio is also hoping to work again with Nas. ‘I’ve sent him more country-trap stuff, some guitar stuff that I’ve played, but I’m also looking at even more genres and more vibes that are really different for me,’ he told Billboard.

The aim, he said, is to help Nas ‘make something else that can also be as big as Old Town Road. Different vibes is what we’re really looking for.’