Photo courtesy of Caoimhe Markey.
It’s about time to hide your husbands, folks, because Lil Nas X is crashing back into the music world in leather knee high boots with his newest single “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)”. On March 26th, the artist released an explosive music video that took us through the world of ‘Montero,’ Lil Nas’s dreamworld that he describes as a place where the ‘parts of ourselves we don’t want the world to see’ can be out in the open.
The video begins in an ethereal heaven-like place, where, after making out with a rhinestone clad alien version of himself, Nas is brought before a jury of Lil Nas’ dressed in blue Victorian chic. This jury of selves sentences him to a stoning, which is likely a nod to his view of his own sexuality growing up, which he stated in a TIME interview was an environment in which being gay ‘is never going to be OK.’ After this scene, Nas swings gracefully down to the depths of hell with a toss of his new bright red dreads, and gives the devil the lap dance of his existence.
Lil Nas X explains in a video with Genius that his real name is in fact Montero Lamar Hill, after which the song is named, and the ‘Call Me By Your Name’ piece is playing on calling the other person (upon whom the song is based) by his own name, the aforementioned Montero. But, if your first reaction to the song name was to link it to Luca Guadagnino’s 2007 film Call Me By Your Name, as I did, you wouldn’t be wrong to assume its involvement in Nas’s inspiration. Nas says that he wrote the song soon after watching the movie that shot Timotheé Chalamet to fame, and cites it as a major source of influence for the song, which is about embracing one’s sexuality.
Unsurprisingly, the reactions to the music video are vicariously mixed. Many praised him for the irony and humor of the video, and for redefining the common homophobic insult that ‘gay people are going to hell.’ Others were scandalized at this graphic representation of homosexuality, especially given that Lil Nas X was known for his ‘Old Town Road’ song to which children all over the nation had given their heart and soul.
It seems Lil Nas X, however, could not be less fazed about the mixed feedback. Of course, he expected backlash from ‘impassioned’ Christians, given that he designed a music video depicting himself, a publicly gay man, pole dancing his way happily down to hell. Whatever the case, Nas had no trouble shooting down his opposition via Twitter, most prominently the gun rights activist Kaitlin Bennett, who dared to ask Nas “Do you still see your dad?” to which he responded “yep and i might f**k yours.”
Nas published a letter on Twitter dedicated to ‘young Montero,’ in which he reflects on how he had promised himself to “never be ‘that’ type of gay person” and “to die with the secret” at fourteen years old. He mentions the fear of flaunting his sexuality so publicly, the anger it will likely indite, but reassures his younger self that it is for a purpose, which he goes on to say is “to make people stay the f**k out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be.”
What is so fantastic about Lil Nas X leaning into this heaven versus hell narrative in MONTERO is not only the ginormous f**k you it delivers to homophobic rhetoric, but also that embracing your sexuality despite possible ‘hellish’ consequences from others is worth the freedom it gives you, and can liberate you from the pain of suppressing your identity.
