Lil Nas X Is Done Being an ‘Acceptable Gay Person’
Like Beyoncé and Taylor Swift before him, Lil Nas X has joined the camp of pop stars releasing tour-centric movies. His entry, however—Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero, which premieres Saturday night on HBO—is lighter on actual concert footage, and instead uses the backdrop of his first-ever headlining tour to track the ongoing evolution of the artist, and the person, Lil Nas X wants to be.
If you’re a casual Lil Nas X fan, observer, or even hater, you might assume that the person he wants to be is simply a bigger and more dominant version of his wisecracking, media-savvy, terminally online persona. After all, his most recent single, “J Christ,” released earlier this month, dials up his affinity for meme-able, semi-shocking, viral-hungry stunts.
Long Live Montero, though, hints that there’s turmoil brewing beneath the surface of that cool exterior. And while that may not be a totally novel thesis for a pop star documentary—“fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be!” describes pretty much every single one of them—Lil Nas X’s story at least stands apart because he’s a queer Black man trying to find his place not only in the bigger pop culture world, but also in the more insular world of his own family.