Where it rhymes, inevitability is close at hand, reminding us that, as Santayana observed, we are condemned to repeat the past we fail to remember.

The spot becomes an instant hit with the townspeople, especially when Khalid starts an open-mic night, rhymes, beats and folk music sharing the moonlit air.

His rhymes are intermittently clever and the chorus contains several sticky hooks, but that fresh, benevolent trickster’s energy that made “Old Town Road” feel so ahead of the curve still remains an elusive quantity.

As they say, past is prologue, history rhymes, all of this has happened before and all of it will happen again, etc.

Another describes her with an expletive that rhymes with “itch.”