Lil Nas X is a young rap music superstar who initially rose to fame through Twitter and Tiktok. However, he has achieved global superstardom after the release of his highly controversial video for the song Montero (Call Me By Your Name). The video features a hilarious homoerotic descent into hell where Lil Nas X performs a lap dance on the devil himself. While there was a huge uproar against the video from ultra conservative groups, in the end, all of the comotion helped boost Lil Nas X’ popularity and turned him into an even bigger household name. Let’s find out more about him.

Lil Nas X: Net Worth, Controversies and Success

When was Lil Nas X born?

Lil Nas X was born on April 9th, 1999 as Montero Lamar Hill in Lithia Springs, Georgia. His parents separated when he was young and he spent a major chunk of his teenage years by himself. He was more active in the virtual world than the real one. He used to create a lot of memes on Twitter and eventually created a large fan following. He also struggled with his homosexuality in his teenage years and used to pray that it was just a phase. However, he eventually accepted it and came out of the closet. He also played trumpet in the fourth grade but quit the choir in high school because he didn’t want to be seen as someone uncool.

Where did Lil Nas X study?

Lil Nas X went to Lithia Springs High School and graduated in 2017. After graduating from high school, Lil Nas X enrolled at the University of West Georgia but dropped out after his freshman year to pursue a career in music.

Was Lil Nas X in the military?

No, Lil Nas X was never in the military and ever since dropping out of college, he has been working as a recording artist.

How did Lil Nas X spark controversy?

Montero (Call Me By Your Name) is the new single from Lil Nas X (born in 1999 with the name of Montero Lamar Hill) and this is, soon enough, the chronology of the song. In July 2020, he posted a video on Twitter in which he was seen driving while listening to an excerpt from the song. The clip, only 38 seconds long and still posted on his channel, has over 21 million views. In the intermission of the last Super Bowl, the rapper starred in an ad for the technology firm Logitech in which his future self sounded in the background. The Super Bowl is one of the biggest showcases in the world for any artist and although this year the event had the worst audience figures since 2007, it still touched 100 million viewers.

The song was released on March 26, on an album with cover art by Spanish Filip Custic, and has already reached number one in the UK and Ireland. The video, a kitsch delirium (in its three-minute duration, the artist falls from heaven to hell and ends up seducing the devil himself with his high-heeled boots), has been a success that has exceeded 300 million views. About 10 million views every day on average. On Spotify, it has reached way over 100 million streams. The US edition of Forbes has referred to the entire phenomenon as “a culture war that is paying off ”.

“The key to the success of the Lil Nas X campaign lies in the combination of two concepts: the use of ironic humor so characteristic of Generation Z, to which he belongs, and the interaction with the community”, considers the expert in social networks Janira Planes, author of the Truffle Season newsletter on technology, memes and internet culture. “On his Twitter, viral posts abound ironically quoting conservative commentators and constructing tweets with the platform’s memetic logic. On YouTube he falsely apologizes, now that scandal apology videos are a genre in themselves, for having taken off some satanic sneakers. In TikTok he takes advantage of the content generated by the users with his song and publishes it on his profile ”.

Did Lil Nas X start making music out of boredom?

In an interview with Rolling Stone, Lil Nas X claimed that he started making music out of “boredom” in late 2018. Only 50 dollars were spent on the creation of Old Time Road. 30 on a base bought online by a Dutch producer and another 20 for record vocals in less than an hour taking advantage of the 20 dollar Tuesdays offer from an Atlanta recording studio called CinCoYo.

The goal was for the song to go viral both on Twitter and on the new social network that was beginning to be talked about in the Western world at that time: TikTok. He knew that his main weapon was the memes he created for Twitter. Lil Nas X is an extremely funny and acid character, something that always works with the current generation. On the other hand, when he was preparing the song, his followers were obsessed by the recently released video game Red Dead Redemption 2, which takes place in the West. “The plan was to use Old Town Road in as many memes as possible until it hits people,” he told Rolling Stone. According to him, he created about a hundred memes with the subject until he finally made the leap to TikTok and the thing got out of hand.

The users of this network turned Old Town Road into the song of the summer of 2019 and used it en masse in the #Yeehaw challenge, which consisted of uploading a video in which they transformed into a cowboy –or cowgirl– after one of the classic jump cuts of TikTok (the cuts in which, after a jump, a user appears with another outfit, all this magic of the home edition).

The result was a massive success: its remix, with the participation of Billy Ray Cyrus, country legend and father of Miley Cyrus, reached number one on the US Billboard chart and was crowned the most successful song of the year at that time.

What is Lil Nas X’ net worth?

As of 2021, the supremely talented young artist is worth $4 million. 

Lil Nas X: Best Quotes

In my music, I’m never going to force anything to try to recreate a moment or something.

You step away from the public eye for too long, they don’t care no more.

I feel like I’m opening the doors for more people. That they feel more comfortable being out. Especially in the hip-hop community.

Take my horse to the old town road and ride till I can’t no more’ basically means just running away, and everything is just gone. The horse is metaphorical for not having anything or just the little things that you do have, and it’s with you.

I believe whenever you’re trying something new, it’s always going to get some kind of bad reception.

Live your life to its fullest potential and don’t really care too much about what other people think of you.

How did Lil Nas X promote his song “Montero”?

The lyrics of Montero (Call Me By Your Name) are a catalog of perversions; and the video, directed by the director Tanu Muino (author of the clip for Juro que, by Rosalía ), and the artist himself are a clever use of color and digital image that ends up placing us at the epicenter of sin. At first, we see how Lil Nas X is tempted by a snake with a human face in the Garden of Eden, later he is tried in a court in front of which he ends up dying and descending into hell on a stripper pole, where he does a lap dance for the devil himself, whom he later ends up liquidating to declare himself the new King of Darkness.

Did Lil Nas X release “Satan” shoes?

In parallel to the launch of the video – in collaboration with the advertising agency / artistic collective MSCHF – Lil Nas X put up for sale the Satan Shoes, an edition of 666 personalized pairs of Nike Air Max 97 with a gold pentagram hanging from the laces and (allegedly) a drop of human blood mixed with the red liquid that fills their soles. The starting price of the sneakers is $ 1,018. The price was chosen based on a quote from the Bible, Luke 10:18. Verse 18 of chapter 10 of the Gospel of Saint Luke that literally says: “He said to them: ‘I was seeing Satan fall from heaven like lightning.” Nike just stopped the commercialization of the sneakers, arguing that there is a copyright violation of its original design. Of course, the firm has sued the MSCHF collective, not Lil Nas X himself, a star too popular among young people to mess with.

But this is nothing compared to what seemed to be Lil Nas X’s true goal: to have the American conservatives campaign for him for free and they bit the bait and went on to react aggressively to his video, making him more popular than ever.