Nas is putting his unstoppable fame to powerful use. The 22-year-old accompanied the music video release of “Industry Baby” — which was memorably set inside an especially queer and well-choreographed prison — with the announcement of a partnership with The Bail Project, a nonprofit working to end cash bail.
“Music is the way I fight for liberation,” he wrote in a statement below the YouTube upload. “It’s my act of resistance. This isn’t just theoretical for me. It’s personal. I know the pain that incarceration brings to a family. And I know the disproportionate impact that cash bail has on Black Americans.”
The campaign has raised more than $60,000 and counting since the song’s release.
“Industry Baby,” which finds the rapper and a chorus of Black men dancing naked in prison showers, joins a colorful history of Billboard No. 1s that have pushed the envelope with sexually explicit lyrics and videos, from Donna Summer’s “Hot Stuff” in 1979 to 50 Cent’s “Candy Shop” in 2005.
But pop music has come a long way since Olivia Newton-John’s “Physical” hit No. 1 in 1981, with a video that is undoubtedly among the most homoerotic four minutes ever recorded. But whereas the vintage beef in Newton-John’s video preened and flexed rather cluelessly, the men in Lil Nas X’s world are unreservedly and unmistakably hot for each other.
“I’m queer, ha,” the rapper muses in “Industry Baby.” He’s laughing all the way to the top of the charts.
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