Lil Nas X is one of the cover subjects for the most recent issue of Variety. Nas – real name Montero Lamar Hill – is promoting his upcoming album, Montero, which already has a series of record-breaking hits. While Olivia Rodrigo (another Variety cover) is definitely one of the huge stories in music today, so is Nas. Millions of people are listening to him and engaging with him and loving him. He’s only 22 years old and he’s an out gay man. You can read the full Variety piece here. Some highlights:
The pandemic: “I think I spent all of the pandemic making music and crying — no in-betweens. For the first month or so, I did not leave my house, and once I did, I was super overly critical of everything I was making. I was letting everything online get to me and feeling like things were over for me.”
He’s not a people-pleaser anymore: “Honestly, I believe the pandemic helped me get out of the idea of trying to please everybody, and the idea of ‘He’s a cool gay person; he’s an acceptable gay person.’ I used to see things like that as a compliment, but it’s not. It just means you’re a people pleaser, and they never become legends. I wanted to be even more authentic in my music and let people into my life. I’m much more confident now — in my music, myself, my sexuality, the things that I believe that I stand for.”
Elton John loves him: Elton John, who has called Nas “a hero of mine,” tells Variety: “Lil Nas X is a bold and brave provocateur who’s making amazing and inspiring music. He’s pushing the boundaries of urban music by wholeheartedly embracing his sexuality and visually projecting that celebration out into the world. Historically, there has been a lot of homophobia in the hip-hop world. DaBaby’s recent recent damaging comments about the LGBTQ community and people living with HIV/AIDS clearly demonstrate that there is still so much education and work to be done.”
Nas on the rappers who hate him. “The honest truth is, I don’t want to speak on a lot of the homophobia within rap because I feel like this is a very dangerous playing field. It’s more for my own safety rather than anything else.”
He’s felt unsafe: “Yeah, a lot of times, absolutely. Especially after [‘Montero’]. There was literally someone who chased my car a few days after that video came out, yelling, ‘F–k you!’ or something. And that’s when I actually started getting security.” Although he’s not sure the video is what caused this stranger to pursue him, “I feel like it couldn’t be a coincidence.”
He loved Call Me by Your Name: “I saw it at home while I was beginning to make my album. And I was really happy to see such an artsy gay film, you know? I used it as a subtitle because I felt like that song, like even before I added in lyrics, sounded like that movie, taking sounds from Indian music, Arabic music, African music. Anyway, I met Timothée at ‘SNL.’ He was just hanging out backstage, and he was like super supportive and showed love. I was like, holy sh-t, that’s a crazy full-circle moment.”
His history as a teenaged Minaj stan: “Being on stan Twitter as a whole, I learned a lot about the things that artists have to go through, and also a lot of music industry history. It’s helping me a lot.”
His current boyfriend is The One: Encountering homophobia “bred a lot of self-hate, but it also made me stronger. Once I was 17 or 18, I finally accepted it — like, for sure accepted it, slowly, more and more — and now I’ve grown into a person that is 100% open with it. I’ve had some good boyfriends and some bad ones. A lot of them were emotionally unavailable or had a lot of insecurity and whatnot.” But “I’ve found someone special now,” he reveals. “I think this is the one. I can’t explain it — it’s just a feeling.”
I’ve said this a million times already, but I love him and I want the world for him. It’s nice because I do think he’s got a good head on his shoulders and I do think that there are so many people within the music industry rooting for him. Not just Beyonce and Elton John – although they are important allies to have – but people coming up with him, his generational peers, and other Black artists and Southern artists. Anyway, Nas is amazing. The rappers who are trying to talk sh-t about him are just telling on themselves.
Cover & IG courtesy of Variety.
