With features from Doja Cat, Megan Thee Stallion, Miley Cyrus and Elton John, Lil Nas X has become one of the world's most respected – and bankable – pop stars. Now he’s released his debut album Montero, marking a new era for the proudly gay black rapper who has leaned in hard to the parts of his identity society would often ask him to compromise.
Following the runaway success of his country debut single Old Town Road in 2019 – which held a No1 spot in the UK charts for two weeks running, won two Grammys and was even remixed by Billy Ray Cyrus – Lil Nas X has become one of the most distinctive presences in modern music. But this backlash is a wave he has surfed with elegance.
His eloquence about sexuality, the music industry’s complicated and homophobic past, and his engagement with how to be proudly black and queer in the public eye, has summoned up disgust from the dustiest, oldest of guards, who have accused him of being a gauche devil worshipper.
But as well as his bold artistic decisions, Lil Nas X – born Montero Lamar Hill – has not shied away from the political outcry his work creates. After a meteoric rise to fame built on social media savvy, deconstructing musical genres with his fusion of hip-hop and country, as well as collaborations with some of the biggest artists in the world, Lil Nas X secured his position as one of the world’s most provocative and exciting musical talents with music videos in which the 22 year old performs a striptease for Satan, dances naked in a gay prison, and with a collaborative project that involved selling Nike trainers laced with human blood. It’s not often that a rapper manages to aggravate both the religious Right and Nike in the same year, yet alone within the same artistic project, but then artists like Lil Nas X don’t come around very often either.