As promotion for his highly-anticipated album Montero revs up, rapper Lil Nas X is growing increasingly honest about the pressures he faces as a queer Black man in America. In recent interviews with British GQ and Entertainment Weekly, the musician has touched on everything from the burden of his own high expectations for himself to the challenge of finding queer Black role models in the music industry.
Listening to Lil Nas X speak more openly about the vulnerability behind his bombastic public person isn’t just an interesting peek behind the curtain; it’s also deeply moving. Finally, the struggles of queer Black men like Nas and myself are being voiced — and hopefully being heard, too.
The rapper’s mega-viral “Call Me By Your Name” video was a powerful moment of representation and a colorful vision of what queer Black liberation can look like. It was rightly celebrated as a bold and confident piece of art. But Lil Nas X’s recent comments about his own insecurities and struggles are equally important for queer Black youth to hear. Behind Lil Nas X’s bombastic public persona lies a well of emotion.
In an interview with British GQ released this week, for example, Lil Nas X revealed he was “crying like a crazy person” after his Christmas-themed track “Holiday” dropped and did not immediately reach the top of music charts. (His first hit, “Old Town Road,” spent a staggering 17 weeks on the Billboard Hot 100.) His reaction to the “Holiday” release speaks to the enormous pressure the artist had placed on himself to succeed.
Lil Nas X received reassurances from the CEO of Columbia Records that it’s hard for “artists who just had true success to get that back immediately.” But Lil Nas X felt he didn’t have room to make mistakes — a pressure familiar to many queer men of color.
On Twitter, Lil Nas X likes to joke around and flame his trolls, but in interviews like this one, he demonstrates an extensive understanding of what his presence in pop culture means to his queer fans. In the absence of musical role models for him to look up to —and to listen to growing up — the rapper felt like he had to top the charts every time in order to prove his own excellence.
This sort of powerful truth-sharing isn’t new for Lil Nas X, but it is growing more frequent and more confident. Shortly before the explosive release of “Call Me By Your Name,” Lil Nas X uploaded a series of short videos to social media that broke down his life journey. The collection of 30-second clips was autobiographical and raw, revealing his struggles with housing insecurity, depression after the success of “Old Town Road”, and romantic difficulties.
“I finally had enough money to put my mom in rehab,” he says in one clip, before also pointing out, “People quickly dubbed me as a ‘one hit wonder.”
He confesses, too, that he once worried he’d alienate straight fans by being himself. It’s clear Lil Nas X knows how complicated and precarious success for a young queer Black figure in America can still be. The fact that he’s willing to share that experience with us is admirable. Instead of simply enjoying his newfound fame and the lifestyle it affords him, Lil Nas X is using his platform to share the kind of thoughts that keep him awake at night.
After the blowout success of “Call Me By Your Name,” he could have easily pretended to be an unfeeling hit-making machine. Instead, he’s showing us he’s human, and giving us permission to feel vulnerable, too.
This kind of radical honesty and transparency is characteristic of how Gen-Z artists are rewriting both the rules of fame and the typical artist-fan relationship. Lil Nas X is happy to deliver an empowering video full of confidence and self-empowerment, but he’s also not going to allow us to think he’s always that person. Who could be?
It’s important for us to see an escapist portrait of empowered identity — someone who gives lap dances to Satan before stealing his horns — but it’s the nuanced portrait of masculinity, queerness, and blackness Lil Nas X presents off-stage that I find the most captivating and affirming. I may never slide down a pole to the underworld, but I know what it’s like to face challenges no one else understands.
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