“I’m not fazed, only here to sin/ If Eve ain’t in your garden, you know that you can call me when you want,” he sings. In the music video for “Montero,” he goes even further: he makes out with himself while playing both a snakeskin-wearing version of Eve and a humanoid serpent in the Garden of Eden dons a Marie Antoinette-like wig and outfit while getting stoned to death at the Coliseum and descends to hell on a stripper pole before delivering a graphic strip tease, wearing only Calvin Klein boxers, to the devil. Last Halloween, he dressed up as Nicki Minaj on his November single “Holiday,” he slipped in a lyric about being a “bottom on the low.”
“I know we promised to never come out publicly, I know we promised to never be ‘that’ type of gay person, I know we promised to die with the secret,” he wrote.īut Lil Nas came out during pride month in 2019, and since has been experimenting with presentations of queerness and gender that are extremely rare for a mainstream male pop star of his stature. The musician elaborated on the shame he previously felt in a letter published on Friday, addressed to his 14-year-old self. Read more: Inside the Record-Breaking Rise of Lil Nas X When that song first hit number one on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 2019, Lil Nas had not yet come out to anyone he was still singing about cheating on a female partner and “bull riding and boobies.” In an interview with TIME later that year, he said he had been taught from a young age that homosexuality “is never going to be O.K.” Lil Nas X’s self-presentation in “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” is a stark contrast from his persona when “Old Town Road” stormed into the public consciousness two years ago. “It took a lot for me to come out of my comfort zone” Read more: Historians Decode the Religious Symbolism and Queer Iconography of Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’ Video I want kids growing up feeling these feelings, knowing they’re a part of the LGBTQ community, to feel like they’re O.K. “Even as a little child, I was really scared of every single mistake I may or may not have made. “I grew up in a pretty religious kind of home-and for me, it was fear-based very much,” he tells TIME. Specifically, Lil Nas hopes the video, which uses classical imagery to tell a story of sin, banishment and redemption, will open up a dialogue about the continuing omnipresence of repression among LGBTQ youth, particularly within Christian spaces. “I want to be part of a conversation that actually applies to my situation and so many people that I know.” “I feel like we’ve come to a time in music where everything is nice and nothing is really cutting edge or starting conversations any more,” he told TIME in an interview on Friday evening. Subscribe in print and get your first three issues for just £1 each, or digitally for just over £1.50 per issue.Lil Nas says this range of impassioned responses is exactly what he had hoped for. It’s sad that a gay artist has to defend himself when so many straight artists who sing about very similar things get away with it and face no backlash whatsoever. Pop Buzz reports the headline read: “Lil Nas X Responds to Criticism of His 'Industry Baby' Music Video: 'Y'all Hate Gay People'.”Īgain, Lil Nas X called them out saying, “criticism is “this song is not good” not someone saying “you are the reason people are getting aids”” People magazine then changed their headline to what it is currently: “Lil Nas X Responds to Post Calling His 'Industry Baby' Music Video 'Sexually Irresponsible'”Ĭriticism is “this song is not good” not someone saying “you are the reason people are getting aids” :/Īn editor’s note explains the change was made to reflect Lil Nas X’s tweets on the matter. People magazine then posted an article regarding the backlash over Lil Nas X’s latest song choosing to describe the homophobia as seen above as “criticism” rather than what it is. you cling on to your masculinity because without it you have nothing else going for yourself.
you don’t like gay black men because you are afraid of black men, as a whole, being viewed as weak. Another Twitter user tweeted that the music video for ‘Industry Baby’ is an “attack on black men”, which Lil Nas X also strongly refuted.