Lil Nas X’s acceptance speech for the Video of the Year award was short and flippant, “I want to say thank you to the Gay Agenda. It was a poignant nod from elder to the younger Black queer artist, each triumphant through being true to themselves. No celebrity could have given a more fitting introduction than Billy Porter who recalled an earlier time that was “not ready for all this Black boy joy” “It’s a new day and I’m so thankful to have lived long enough to see it,” Porter heralded. Harris’ jacket sported the number 433,816 in red, which referenced “the number of people living with HIV in the U.S. The performance included a dose of AIDS awareness, as he was joined onstage by Mardrequs Harris of the Southern AIDS Coalition. For the finale, he delivered a short, sexy sample of Montero clad in tiny sparkly neon pink shorts.
Dressed in full regalia, Lil Nas X led his dancers in a drumline onstage, stripped down to track pants, and marched into Montero State Prison.
He performed a live debut of “Industry Baby” joined by collaborating rapper Jack Harlow. He picked up 3 wins at the 2021 MTV Video Music Awards, including the coveted Video of the Year award. Lil Nas X’s pop culture dominance is indisputable. And all of these things have conspired to make Lil Nas X a phenomenon that will be remembered for much more than phenomenal record sales. As followers and critics argue over the propriety of a lap dance for Satan, a butt naked prison shower scene, or a cisgender man’s pregnancy photoshoot, they engage in highly public dialogues on the rights of queer sexual and gender expression. His pithy clap backs expose the structural cracks of the most commonly used homophobic arguments and pinpoint the heterosexist double standards by which he is judged. He releases widely acclaimed work and homophobes, resentful of his mass appeal, attack as if driven by primal urge rather than clear reason. His videos and live performances display unambiguously queer Black sexiness before mainstream audiences. His releases shatter sales and streaming records.
The agenda to make people stay the fuck out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be.Lil Nas X is a self-affirming Black gay millennial, a megastar still rising, and an impresario of social media.
You see this is very scary for me, people will be angry, they will say I’m pushing an agenda. “I know we promised to never be ‘that’ type of gay person, I know we promised to die with the secret, but this will open doors for many other queer people to simply exist. “I know we promised to never come out publicly,” Nas wrote. When debuting the video on Thursday night, Nas also posted a letter to his 14-year-old self, with words that resonated deeply for me, and I suspect many other LGBTQ people. When One Direction’s self-conscious flirtation with each other only magnified their fame - and their sex appeal to tween and teen girls - I marveled at how these lads managed to flip the boy band script on gay panic while also wondering whether an A-list queer music star would ever be able to just actually flirt without quotation marks attached to it.Ĭut to Lil Nas X, grinding on Satan’s lap in thigh-high stiletto boots, an image that made me feel old and young again all at once. All of these men have made music that I’ve loved, and I’ve celebrated when they were finally able to come out, while also clocking the marked downturn many of their music careers took after they did so. I do not blame any of these men for making these choices, if indeed it’s even possible to call them choices given the pervasive homophobia of the music business at the time and the world at large. See: Elton John, George Michael, Michael Stipe, Mika and, again, Ricky Martin. Instead, historically, gay men who’d reached a similar career pinnacle at roughly the same age have either had to stay in the closet and sing about women - see: New Kids on the Block’s Jonathan Knight, NSYNC’s Lance Bass, Ricky Martin - or come out after establishing themselves and keep their sexuality in vaguely PG territory (if that).