Lil Nas was recently big upped by Dolly Parton for his cover of her song Jolene during a performance for BBC Live Radio. He has become a household name, mostly for being *gasp* an openly gay artist which is in and of itself controversial. Lil Nas X expressing his queerness has earned him vocal homophobic detractors. Despite the nastiness that Lil Nas faces on the daily, he still pushes the envelope in his art and has an uncanny way of hitting naysayers where it hurts. From making shoes with his blood on them to giving Satan a lap dance to kissing a male dancer on stage, Lil Nas does not give one single f*ck about people and their pearls. Lil Nas is profiled in XXL magazine. He discusses not feeling as if he is taken seriously in music, particularly hip hop, and how for many people being gay is still a punchline. Below are a few more highlights from XXL:
This is a long way to go to say that talking about sex in hip-hop is not new. But when Lil Nas X—hip-hop’s most prominent openly gay male rapper, and its first out-of-the-closet mainstream star—says something like, “I might bottom on the low, but I top shit” on his semi-Christmas loosie “Holiday,” he’s not necessarily breaking new ground. But then again, he is. Much like N.W.A’s “F-ck tha Police” was not the first anti-authoritarian song ever recorded—the entire genre of punk rock was based on railing against social norms with groups such as Black Flag making songs like 1981’s “Police Story,” which begins, “F-cking city is run by pigs”—Lil Nas X’s comments come off as revolutionary because of the context. Eazy-E, Dr. Dre, Ice Cube, MC Ren and DJ Yella weren’t saying anything new, but they—Black men from the inner-city killing fields of Los Angeles—were saying it, and that made the powers that be uncomfortable. Nicki Minaj and Cardi B can give lap dances in rap videos with little pushback from the center of hip-hop’s audience, but when Lil Nas X does it, it’s a problem.
“Honestly, I don’t feel as respected in hip-hop or many music places in general,” Lil Nas X says over Zoom this past August. “But these are communities that I am a part of, whether people would like it or not. This is something that I wanted to do because, not that my entire album is rap, but there are rap tracks on my album. I am a rapper. I am a pop star. I am a gay artist. But it’s like, I belong in these places, you know?”
To this point, the artwork for Black Flag’s “Police Story” features a gun shoved in a police officer’s mouth, the caption saying, “Make me come, f-got!” Because for too many people, being gay was—and still is—a punch line.
Hip-hop was created for artists like Lil Nas X to exist. Despite what a certain strain of purist might say, his presence is not an aberration of goals or abdication of duty, but the fulfillment of the music’s highest ideals. To the level that he’s accepted, hip-hop has shown growth. In the late 1990s, One Nut, an independent hip-hop magazine, created a series of minor scandals when it published a fake profile of a purportedly closeted homosexual rapper. Radio stations and gossip circles wonder aloud as to the identity of the fictitious gay rapper—and it wasn’t to congratulate them.
Today, some of Lil Nas X’s loudest detractors in hip-hop include Boosie, who proudly boasted about hiring a sex worker to perform oral sex on his underage son and nephews in order to make them “real men,” T.I., who, along with his wife, is being investigated for allegedly drugging and sexually assaulting multiple women, and lower, mid-level local rappers with all sorts of ultra-violent songs about the glorification of murder and selling and using of drugs. It would seem that a genre experiencing a high murder rate and is more accepting of guns than the Taliban sweeping into abandoned military bases in Afghanistan draws the line at non-binary sexual identities for men. The same kinds of rappers that give passes to culturally appropriating White girls, who may or may not use the n-word, begin to wring their hands, asking, “What about the children?” when the idea of man-on-man sex is even hinted at.
I am a Lil Nas X stan full stop and I don’t say that about a lot of people. I could literally count on one hand and have fingers left over of the celebrities I stan. I love Lil Nas because he reminds me of the artists of the 80s and 90s who had talent and something to say and is unapologetic about it. I do not understand why a lot of hip hop artists and their toxic masculinity keep coming for Lil Nas. Lil Nas of course just wipes the floor with their salty tears. Lil Nas is right that being gay was always a punchline and it unfortunately still is. We are moving away from this sort of stupidity but it is still there, especially in certain communities like hip hop and country. I love that there are so many artists who identify with that LGBTQIA community and that they are open about it.
The way that Lil Nas expresses himself is not controversial to me. I did grow up with Madonna’s Justify My Love video and Prince. However, what has upset me about people’s reactions to Lil Nas, particularly rappers like T.I. and Boosie, is how hypocritical their comments have been. They are trying to push Lil Nas into a closet of sorts by stating that his art is not good for children while they continue to make music that caters to misogynoir and an abusive culture towards women. I hope Lil Nas knows that there are more people who love and respect his art than there are who are “appalled” by it. As Lil Nas has often said, he was raised to hate his queerness because of society and not necessarily his mom, but has grown to love himself. That is the best sort of example for children there could possibly be.
god i love me. i’m so smart and hot. really wishing me the best in life.
— MONTERO ? (@LilNasX) October 4, 2021
wow man last year i was sleeping on my sisters floor, had no money, struggling to get plays on my music, suffering from daily headaches, now i’m gay.
— MONTERO ? (@LilNasX) July 28, 2019
AND THIS ONE IS FOR THE CHAMPIONNNNNSSSS!!! ? https://t.co/0FZB0tAW5C
— MONTERO ? (@LilNasX) October 3, 2021
life is so crazy. 5 years ago i used to just sit on twitter in my room all day but now i’m rich and i sit on twitter in my room all day.
— MONTERO ? (@LilNasX) October 2, 2021
