In which I ruin a good thing by over-analyzing it. As is my way.
Unless you’ve been on a full media cleanse for the past six months, you’ve heard the controversy about the newest music video for Lil Nas X’s “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).” And chances are good that, fan or not, you’ve watched said video, and watched a behotpantsed Nas slide down a stripper pole into hell and give Satan a lap dance.
Lil Nas X has said the video is striking out against the hypocrisy of conservative Christians who believe that he, and all his fellow LGBTQ individuals, are going to hell. “i spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the shit y’all preached would happen to me because i was gay,” he said on Twitter. “so i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.” It’s a raw and powerful statement, and it’s a context that turns a drug-fueled sex romp bop and a satanic lap-dance video into an unexpectedly powerful message. (It’s also, one must acknowledge, some master-level trolling.)
But Lil Nas X is more than just an effective artist, as Complex points out. He’s also an effective marketer, with a deft grasp of digital media those of us in the business would kill to have. His blend of Twitter, YouTube, and merchandising collaboration, with a liberal dose of sensationalism, has come together in a comprehensive, cohesive, authentic, organic-feeling campaign that he unashamedly acknowledges has been nine months in the making. And he recently passed 100 million streams on Spotify.
It’s a push to get eyes on his video. It’s a push to get eyes on his defiant rejection of the messaging that the person he is warrants eternal torment because of his sexual orientation.
And, I mean… it’s working.
The Satan Sneakers
The release of “Montero” was closely accompanied by the announcement of Nas’s sneaker collaboration with design studio MSCHF. The limited-edition sneakers were customized Nike Air Max 97s that included, among other infernal aesthetic cues, just a li’l bit of human blood mixed into the paint in the soles of the shoe. Only 666 (get it?) were produced. (And promptly sold out.)
This generated, of course, an online furor, with some people thinking it’s awful but also awesome and others thinking it’s straight-up awful and everyone having an opinion they wanted to share. Even better/worse, Nike itself was forced to weigh in, averting boycott by making it clear that the brand had nothing whatsoever to do with the production of said sneaker. It was an outrage, it was an insult, it was a righteous blow, it was a very expensive pair of shoes — whatever it was, no one didn’t have an opinion about what it was. And in the wake of the controversy, Nas released a heartfelt “apology” video on YouTube, expressing his regret for any insult he might have caused before cracking up and just rolling “Montero” one more time.
(Note: Nike did, ultimately, sue MSCHF for trademark infringement, and won, triggering a recall. Buyers of the shoes will receive a full refund for the $1,018 sale price.)
(I mean, let’s not pretend Nike hasn’t legitimately “suffered significant harm to its goodwill, including among consumers who believe that Nike is endorsing satanism” as a result of their association, however spurious, with this shoe. In any other situation, I’d say it’s a mistake to learn from, but I suspect Nas knew exactly what he was doing from the beginning.)
YouTube
Not even counting his fauxpology, Lil Nas X makes thorough use of YouTube. The video itself was followed by so so many novel opportunities to consume his content. In the style of videos offering popular songs as if they’re being heard in, for instance, an abandoned shopping mall, or playing in the next room, Nas gives us “MONTERO but ur in the bathroom of hell while lil nas is giving satan a lap dance in the other room.” He also gives us “Satan’s extended version,” which is really just the song with an extra run-through of the chorus, and an instrumental version, which is just the song without his vocals.
He celebrated his birthday with “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name) but it’s lofi and something you can study to lol,” basically a lounge-friendly slow-jam “Montero” that’s great with a pre-dinner cocktail on the couch.
It’s not even slick dance remixes or extended cuts or collabs with other hot musicians — it’s the same stuff, not hugely different, but different, and it’s new, and it gets eyeballs. It doesn’t change, because his message hasn’t changed, and his message infuses the video. It’s more impressions, more clicks, more traffic. And the dude knows how to do it.
Social Media
Of course there have been reactions on both (all?) sides of the controversy Nas willfully, gleefully ginned up. And the man himself has been a part of it, personally in the fray. He personally clapped back against South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem after she tweeted her outrage about the Satan shoes (won’t someone think of the children?!!!). He jokingly condemned SNL to hell after a recent cold open that featured him giving God a lap dance. And he really wants this whole thing to be a South Park episode.
(He also released “Twerk Hero,” in which the player uses their mouse to guide Nas’s twerking butt to collect little jeweled pitchforks [and I gotta say, the game physics applied to his jiggling heinie are impressive].
On TikTok, a couple of musicians came together to work on a badass heavy-metal version of “Montero” (“What if Lil Nas X’s ‘Montero’ was heavy?”). And instead of a) ignoring it, or b) being a jerk about it, Nas deemed it “hard” and said, “let’s do it”.
That sort of thing, this intense social-media savviness, is just his way. Back in 2018, Nas’s breakout “Old Country Road” initially caught fire as a meme on TikTok (#yeehaw). It got wildly shared and sampled, and only then was he approached by the CEO of Columbia Records. (On, of course, Instagram.) Just a day after he dropped the single, he tweeted his desire to get Billy Ray Cyrus in on a collab… which they later did.
(One should also remember that Lil Nas X, at the tender age of 22, is a mere toddler and around the age of the interns you’re already using to handle your social media. Internet culture? He’s been soaking in it. He started making Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter videos when he was still in high school, so he’s got a head start on which you, as a grown-up, [probably] will never catch up. But it’s good to try.)
But what does it all mean?
The thing one mustn’t forget amidst all the cleverness and trollery is that Lil Nas X is, in fact, a talented artist, that the song slaps, and that the sentiment behind it is an important one: to quote the man, “this will open doors for many other queer people to simply exist.” And no, “MONTERO but ur in the bathroom of hell” doesn’t explicitly drive home a message of giving queer people the chance to just effing live. But you don’t always have to.
The day before he released “Montero,” Lil Nas X posted a letter to his 14-year-old self on Instagram, apologizing, after a fashion, for publicly making the statement that his fearful, closeted young self would have preferred he take to the grave.
you see this is very scary for me, people will be angry, they will say i’m pushing an agenda. but the truth is, i am. the agenda to make people stay the fuck out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be. sending you love from the future.
Because that’s the point.
Ultimately, even jokingly speculating about whether Lil Nas X is “one of us” and commenting on his practiced, deliberate savvy at digital marketing kind of gives ourselves too much credit. Because none of us who work with clients care half as much about our work as he does about his. None of us care about our message as much as he does his. It’s dedication that’s something to learn from.
Of course, the most important thing we can take away from all this is that judging and condemning and marginalizing queer people ruins lives, and the only acceptable thing to do is just let them live freely as the people they are. So there’s that, too.