Lil Nas X Reaches No. 1 on Billboard Top 100
Two years after Lil Nas X released the wildly popular “Old Town Road,” the young rapper has once again reached the top of the charts with his new single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”
After coming out as gay in 2019, Lil Nas X did not hold back in “Montero.” The new song explicitly references gay sex multiple times. Lil Nas X told Genius, “OK, it’s about time that I say something out of pocket in a song. Let’s normalize having these fuckin’ lines in songs the same way, you know, somebody might talk about fuckin’ a girl or fuckin’ a guy, you know, with opposite genders.” He went on to emphasize the importance of LGBTQ representation in media for the future.
Accompanying the release of “Montero” was a music video in which Lil Nas X succumbs to temptation in the Garden of Eden, slides down a stripper pole to Hell, and proceeds to give Satan a lap dance. Though many in the queer community celebrated the video, some conservative Christians were offended by his use of religious imagery.
The controversy continued when Lil Nas X released his custom “Satan Shoes,” a modified pair of Nike Air Max 97s manufactured by the company MSHCF. Each of the 666 pairs supposedly contain one drop of human blood and feature satanic imagery in red and black. Nike was quick to sue MSCHF over the shoes, resulting in a halting of all sales.
Conservatives like Candace Owens and South Dakota governor Kristi Noem attacked Lil Nas X and the “Satan Shoes” on Twitter. Owens stated the shoes were “keeping black America behind,” while Noem tweeted about the “fight for the soul of our nation” and cited a Bible verse in response to the release of the shoes. Lil Nas X countered the verse, tweeting, “‘Shoot a child in your mouth while I’m ridin’—Montero 1:08,” a lyric from the song.
“Shoot a child in your mouth while I'm ridin'”
-Montero 1:08 https://t.co/AFjBdcBEtG
— nope ???? (@LilNasX) March 28, 2021
The controversy did not come as a surprise to Lil Nas X. A day before the song’s release, the rapper, whose full name is Montero Lamar Hill, posted a letter he wrote to his 14-year-old self to his Twitter. “You see this is very scary to me, people will be angry, they will say I’m pushing an agenda,” the letter reads. He continues to admit that he is, in fact, pushing an agenda—one to “make people stay the fuck out of other people’s lives.”
— nope ???? (@LilNasX) March 26, 2021
The backlash to “Montero” seems to have only made the song more popular. On April 5, the single debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Top 100 chart. The music video surpassed 100 million views on YouTube on Wednesday, and on the same day, the song reached No. 1 on the global Spotify chart.
SNL even included Lil Nas X, played by Chris Redd, in an installment of the show’s “Oops, They Did It Again” skit. In the segment, Redd, donning Lil Nas X’s red cornrows from the music video, gave God a lap dance for the sake of fairness. He then assured the audience that “that was not the real God” and it was “just my friend Gary.”
Image courtesy of the Instagram page of Lil Nas X
