“Don’t look at me as this perfect hero who’s not going to make mistakes and should be the voice for everybody,” he says. The album brims with surprises that continuously reveal him anew, offering a peek into the mind of an artist who is unafraid of himself or his impulses, even with the knowledge that he’s still a work in progress. Elsewhere, the dark riffs on the outstanding “LIFE AFTER SALEM” bring him to new creative lands altogether. On “SCOOP”, he finds an effervescent kindred spirit in Doja Cat, while “DOLLA SIGN SLIME”, which features Megan Thee Stallion, is a trapped-out victory lap. And make no mistake, there is plenty of joy here. “If I didn’t blow up, I would’ve died tryna be here/If it didn’t go, suicide, wouldn’t be here,” he sings, adding, “Now they all come around like they been here/When you get this rich and famous everybody come up to you singing, ‘Hallelujah, how’d you do it?’”Īll throughout-on songs like “ SUN GOES DOWN” or “ DONT WANT IT”-the weight of his burdens exists in contrast to the levity of his sound, a particular kind of Black and queer disposition that insists on a joy that is far more profound than any pain. On “ DEAD RIGHT NOW”, a thunderous track complete with choral flourishes, he recaps the journey to this moment, how it almost didn’t happen and the ways his personal relationships have changed since. And I know that’s going to take me being more open and bringing it out of myself no matter how much it hurts or feels uncomfortable to say things that I need to say.” But any such ambivalence doesn’t explicitly manifest in the songs here, as Lil Nas X roams his interior spaces as openly as he does assorted styles-which span everything from emo and grunge to indie pop and pop punk. “I feel like with this album, I know what I wanted,” he tells Apple Music’s Zane Lowe. The Georgia-born singer-rapper responded in kind with a remix and remixes to that remix that rocketed him up the charts and simultaneously highlighted the fickleness of the entire endeavour-did Billy Ray Cyrus suddenly prove his country bona fides any more than the addition of Young Thug proved his trap ones or Diplo his electronic? But that’s the magic of Lil Nas X and of his debut album MONTERO: He knows that pop music is whatever the artist creating it wants it to be, an exercise of vulnerable imagination packaged as unyielding, larger-than-life confidence. His breakthrough single, “ Old Town Road”, forced the industry to revisit old conversations about the limitations of genre, race and who is kept out (or locked in) by the definitions we use to talk about music. Lil Nas X is nothing if not a testament to the power of being true to yourself.

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