Lil Nas X
Montero Lamar Hill, known as Lil Nas X, is an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. He rose to prominence with the release of his country rap single "Old Town Road", which first achieved viral popularity on the micro-platform app TikTok in early 2019 before climbing music charts internationally and becoming diamond certified by November of that same year.
"Old Town Road" topped the Billboard Hot 100 chart and remained there for nineteen weeks, becoming the longest-running number-one song since the chart debuted in 1958. Several remixes of the song were released, the most popular of which featured country singer Billy Ray Cyrus. Nas X came out as gay while "Old Town Road" was atop the Hot 100, becoming the only artist to do so while having a number-one record. Following the success of "Old Town Road", Nas X released his debut EP, titled 7, which spawned two further singles, with "Panini" peaking at number 5 on the Hot 100 and "Rodeo" peaking at number 22.
Nas X was the most-nominated male artist at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, where he ultimately won awards for Best Music Video and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. "Old Town Road" earned him two MTV Video Music Awards including Song of the Year; the American Music Award for Favorite Rap/Hip Hop Song; and Nas X is the first and only openly LGBTQ artist to win a Country Music Association award. Time named him as one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet in 2019. In addition, he was featured on Forbes 30 under 30 list in 2020.
Early life and education
Montero Lamar Hill was born in Lithia Springs, Georgia, a small city outside of Atlanta, on April 9, 1999. His parents divorced when he was six, and he settled in the Bankhead Courts housing project with his mother and grandmother. Three years later, he moved in with his father, a gospel singer, north of the city in Austell, Georgia. Although initially reluctant to leave, he later regarded it as an important decision: "There's so much shit going on in Atlanta—if I would have stayed there, I would have fallen in with the wrong crowd." He started "using the Internet heavily right around the time when memes started to become their own form of entertainment"; about when he was thirteen.He spent much of his teenage years alone, and turned to the Internet, "particularly Twitter, creating memes that showed his disarming wit and pop-culture savvy." His teenage years also saw him struggling with his coming out to himself as being gay; he prayed that it was just a phase, but around sixteen or seventeen he came to accept it. He began playing trumpet in the fourth grade and was first chair by his junior high years, but quit out of fear of looking uncool.
He attended Lithia Springs High School and graduated in 2017. He attended the University of West Georgia for one year before dropping out to pursue a musical career. During this time, he stayed with his sister and supported himself with jobs at Zaxby's restaurants and the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park. In September 2019 he revisited his high school to perform a surprise concert.
Career
2015–2017: Internet personality
Hill said he began to isolate himself from "outside-of-class activities" during his teenage years. He spent large amounts of time online in hopes of building a following as an internet personality to promote his work, but was unsure what to focus on creatively. In a Rolling Stone interview he stated, "I was doing Facebook comedy videos, then I moved over to Instagram, and then I hopped on Twitter... where I really was a master. That was the first place where I could go viral." Nas X has: 2.3 million followers on Twitter; four million followers on Instagram; "5.2 million subscribers on YouTube, and over 44 million monthly listeners on Spotify." He posted short-format comedy videos on Facebook and Vine.During this period, he reportedly created and ran Nicki Minaj fan accounts on Twitter, including one called "@NasMaraj", according to a New York Magazine investigation. In 2017, this account gained attention for its flash fiction-style interactive "scenario threads" popularized on Twitter using dashboard app TweetDeck. The investigation linked @NasMaraj to the practice of "Tweetdecking", or using multiple accounts in collaboration to artificially make certain tweets go viral. The @NasMaraj account was suspended by Twitter due to "violating spam policies". After the suspension of @NasMaraj, New York Magazine's investigation concluded that he subsequently opened a new account with handle "@NasMarai", and that his current Twitter account at the time was a repurposed version of that "@NasMarai" account with a changed handle. After media reports linked Nas X to the Minaj fan accounts, he called the reports a "misunderstanding", effectively denying having run the accounts. However, in May 2020, Lil Nas X admitted, in a tweet, to being a fan of Minaj. He explained why he initially denied it, stating that if people knew he was a fan of hers, they would think he was gay: "People will assume if you had an entire fan page dedicated to nicki u are gay. and the rap/music industry ain't exactly built or accepting of gay men yet". On June 17, 2020, Minaj responded to Nas, tweeting "It was a bit of a sting when you denied being a barb, but I understand. Congratulations on building up your confidence to speak your truth". Lil Nas apologized to Minaj, saying he "felt so bad, hoping u wouldn't see my denial".
In late 2019, Lil Nas X landed on music as a path to success, and started writing and recording songs in his closet. He adopted the name Lil Nas X, which is a tribute to the rapper Nas. In late October 2018, he ran across the music that would be "Old Town Road".
2018–2019: "Old Town Road"s success and ''7'' EP
On December 3, 2018, Nas X released the country rap song "Old Town Road". He bought the beat for the song anonymously on an online store from Dutch producer YoungKio for $30; it samples Nine Inch Nails' track "34 Ghosts IV" from their sixth studio album Ghosts I–IV. He recorded at a "humble" Atlanta studio, CinCoYo, on their "$20 Tuesdays" taking less than an hour. Nas X began creating memes to promote "Old Town Road" before it was picked up by short-form video social media TikTok users. TikTok encourages its 500 million global users to "endless imitation," with videos generating copies usually using the same music; the "app’s frantic churn of content...acts as a potent incubator for viral music hits." Nas X estimated he made about a hundred memes to promote it; the song went viral in early 2019 due to the #Yeehaw Challenge meme on TikTok. Millions of users posted videos of themselves dressed as a wrangler or cowgirl, with most #yeehaw videos using the song for their soundtrack; as of July 2019, they have been seen more than 67 million times. Another core audience tied to social media is children who are hidden in the statistics of adult listeners. Quartz.com says the song certainly owes part of its success to the demographic, and notes they are attracted to the song being repetitive, easy to sing along to, and using lyrics about riding horses and tractors, which kids can relate to. It debuted at number 83 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, later climbing to number one. The track also debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart at number 19 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at number 36. After an "intense bidding war", Nas X signed with Columbia Records in March 2019. Billboard controversially removed the song from the Hot Country songs chart in March 2019 telling Rolling Stone:In Robert Christgau's opinion, "Taking 'Old Town Road' off the country chart strikes me as racist pure and simple, because country radio remains racist regardless of the Darius Ruckers and Kane Browns it makes room for." Another Billboard spokesperson told Genius, "Billboards decision to take the song off of the country chart had absolutely nothing to do with the race of the artist." Despite being removed from the main Country Songs chart, the song charted on Billboard
Country music star Billy Ray Cyrus supported "Old Town Road", and became the featured vocalist in an April 2019 remix, the first of several. That same month, Nas X broke Drake's record for the most U.S. streams in one week with 143 million streams for the week ending April 11, surpassing Drake's "In My Feelings", which had 116.2 million streams in a week in July 2018; as of August 2019 it has streamed over a billion plays on Spotify alone. NBC News's Michael Arceneaux noted,
In May 2019, the video was released and as of August 2019, has over 370 million views. Nas X released his debut EP, 7, on June 21, 2019. The EP debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. On June 23, 2019, Nas X performed with Cyrus at the 2019 BET Awards. On June 30, Nas X made his international debut at the largest greenfield festival in the world, the U.K.’s annual Glastonbury Festival, when he and Billy Ray Cyrus made a surprise appearance and joined Miley Cyrus for the song, before performing his new single "Panini" solo in a set seen nationally on BBC. On the same day, Nas X became one of the most visible Black queer male singers when he came out as gay. This was especially significant for an artist in the country and hip hop genres, both of which emphasize machismo and "historically snubbed queer artists". Black queer male artists in hip hop having mainstream acceptance arguably started in 2012 with Frank Ocean’s coming out just before Channel Orange was released. For end of June 2019 sales, Rolling Stone premiered the Rolling Stone Top 100 in early July with three Nas X songs: "Rodeo" with Cardi B at number nine; "Panini" at four; and "Old Town Road" as the first-ever number-one song on the chart.
2020: Debut album
On July 7, 2020, Lil Nas X revealed that his upcoming debut album is "almost finished". He also stated that he's working on a mixtape, and invited producers to submit their beats for his new music. On July 10, he teased the release of a new song titled "Call Me by Your Name", posting a snippet of it online. On July 29, Barbadian singer Rihanna praised the snippet during a video call with Nas X.Public recognition
In July 2019, Time named him one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet for his "global impact on social media", and "overall ability to drive news". In late July 2019, the MTV Video Music Award nominations were announced, with Nas X receiving eight. He performed "Panini," an "ode to the cartoon rabbit of the same name from Cartoon Network's Chowder," with a troupe of "Tron-inflected dancers" at the 2019 MTV VMAs, where he also won two awards: Song of the Year, for which he is the first LGBTQ person to do so; and the video's Calmatic for Best Direction. He was nominated for five fan-chosen 2019 Teen Choice Awards, winning Choice R&B/Hip-Hop Song for the Cyrus remix of "Old Town Road". "Old Town Road" is also the YouTube top song of the summer in the U.S. and over fifty other countries and territories; it is also their second top global song of the summer. Nas X and Billy Ray Cyrus’ remix also won the Country Music Association Awards collaboration category, CMA Music Event of the Year; Nas X is the first out gay man to ever be nominated for a CMA award, and the only openly LGBTQ person to win. Vox noted the Event Award is not a part of the CMA televised celebration, and they snubbed Nas X from bigger appropriate categories. The "Old Town Road" remix with Cyrus has been nominated for a People's Choice Award for Song of 2019, Nas X was also nominated for "Male Artist of 2019" at the 45th People's Choice Awards. In October, at the 2019 BET Hip Hop Awards Nas X, with Cyrus, won for Best Collab/Duo or Group, and Single of the Year. Also in October 2019, Nas X's label Columbia Records/Sony Music Entertainment, won the Music & Sound Recordings Award from SAG-AFTRA for "Old Town Road " featuring Cyrus; the awards are presented "for work that exemplifies equal access" of LGBTQ and "other misrepresented or underrepresented groups." In November 2019, Nas X won the American Music Award for Favorite Rap/Hip Hop Song, he was nominated for four others including three for "Old Town Road" featuring Billy Ray Cyrus. In November 2019, Nas X was nominated for six Grammy Awards, including Record of the Year, Album of the Year and Best New Artist, and eventually won Best Music Video and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. Lil Nas X's success caused him to become the first person of color and the first openly gay performer to be listed by Forbes in its annual Highest-Paid Country Acts List.Ken Burns, who produced the PBS documentary Country Music, noted,
"Panini" was released as Nas X's second single through Columbia Records in June 2019. It is named after the fictional cabbit of the same name in the animated television series Chowder, and does not refer to the sandwich of the same name. In mid-September 2019 "Panini" had its first remix released with rapper DaBaby.
In early July 2019, "Old Town Road" achieved its 13th week at the top spot on the Billboard 100, becoming the first hip hop song to do so. It is also the first song to sell ten million copies while in the top spot. On its fifteenth week at the top, Nas X became the first openly gay artist to have a song last as long, beating out Elton John’s 1997 double A-side—where both sides of the record are promoted as hits, "Candle in the Wind 1997"/"Something About the Way You Look Tonight". At nineteen weeks at number one, Nas X holds the record for the most weeks since the chart was first introduced in 1958., the song has also charted nineteen weeks atop the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart; beating a three-way tie record. At nineteen weeks at the top of the Hot Rap Songs chart the song has also beaten a three-way tie. By November 2019, the song was Diamond Certified, moving a combined sales and streaming ten million units.
Public image
Nas X has been noted for his public fashions; in July 2019, Vogue noted Nas X as a "master" at giving the cowboy aesthetic a glam look in his appearances and on Instagram. His stylist, Hodo Musa, says he aims for items that are "electric, playful, colorful, and futuristic." For his on-stage look at the 2019 MTV Video Music Awards he wore a cowboy motif cherry-red Nudie suit. Wrangler, which is mentioned in the "Old Town Road" lyrics, has consistently sold out of Nas X co-branded fashions.For the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards Nas X wore several outfits including a head-to-toe couture fuschia Versace suit with a pink harness which took 700 hours to construct.
In July 2020, Lil Nas X modelled in a trailer video for a new skin-care line by Rihanna's Fenty Beauty.