“You heard it?” he says when I point out that nothing on the internet ever truly disappears. Merely mentioning the song makes him cover his face in embarrassment, hiding his high-beam smile, and shaking his head. He took on a straight persona for those early songs, lewdly rapping that he “might go and fuck ya motha” on the unpolished and unmixed track Nasarati, formerly available on the rapper’s SoundCloud page. Because it felt like that’s what I had to do.” “It was just me acting really hard,” he admits. The track, Shame, saw Nas lean into the rough-edged, macho qualities of the rap styles he grew up listening to: Drake, Lil Uzi Vert and Rae Sremmurd. One day, while procrastinating over his course work, he wrote his first song. He slept on the floor of his sister’s apartment and was about to drop out of college, giving up on the computer science major he half-heartedly pursued at the University of West Georgia. Just two years ago, he was a silly, meme-loving 18-year-old who was still figuring it out.
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“It was like the world was playing a prank on me.”Ĭorset: Zana Bayne. “Everything seemed like a dream or a movie,” Nas says of his whirlwind 2019, culminating in six Grammy nominations, including best record for Old Town Road and best album for 2019’s 7. The crossover hit was embraced by everyone from Rolling Stone magazine to teens on TikTok, prompting Lil Nas X to quickly release a version featuring country titan Billy Ray Cyrus, known to one generation for his 1992 hit Achy Breaky Heart, and another for being Miley’s dad. The key to this success has been his track Old Town Road, an infectious blend of hip hop and country, right down to lyrics such as “Ridin’ on a tractor/Lean all in my bladder” and “Cowboy hat from Gucci/Wrangler on my booty”. He is simultaneously a Gen-Z success story, red carpet fixture, Billboard record holder and, perhaps most surprising to Lil Nas X himself, a queer figurehead.
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In 12 months, he has gone from “the black cowboy with the song on TikTok” to a global superstar.
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Today, 20-year-old Lil Nas X (Nas to his friends) is a far cry from his teenage self, Montero Lamar Hill from Lithia Springs.