Lil Nas X is the boundary-smashing pop revolutionary of 2021
Rapper-singer-songwriter visionary Lil Nas X is the MVP of Gen Z. Born between the mid 1990s and early 2010s, so-called "Zoomers" have been maligned by naysayers as navel-gazing narcissists and emotionally weak snowflakes. But Gen Zers deserve props for rejecting millennials' "bottle-up-your-emotions-and-hustle-til-ya-die" ethos, and for prioritizing self-care and confessional vulnerability. Like no other generation before it, Gen Z has made unprecedented strides toward genuine social equity by holding abusers of power accountable.
No pop star better embodies Gen Z's heady concoction of audacious self-assertion and "oversharing-is-political" confessionalism than Lil Nas X. In 2021, Nas has embraced his identity as a radically-open, unabashedly-proud Black gay pop conceptualist who publicly confesses his demons while putting haters in their place, one meticulously-composed tweet at a time. Born Montero Lamar Hill and raised in Atlanta's Buckhead Courts housing projects, Lil Nas X made his debut in late 2018 with country-trap viral banger "Old Town Road." Re-released and endlessly re-mixed the following year, the song went on to become one of the top-selling and streaming singles in history. Lil Nas X subsequently dropped his 7 EP that same year, buoyed by solid, if less remarkable, singles like "Panini" and "Rodeo."
This year, Lil Nas X delivered his debut full-length studio album, for multiple Grammy awards including Album of the Year. Two tunes — "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" and "Industry Baby," which features Jack Harlow — topped 's pop singles chart in 2021 and emerged as indispensable songs of the summer. The phantasmagoric video for "Montero," co-directed by Lil Nas X and Tanu Muino, is a simmering stir-fry of biblical imagery, gay sex and campy Satanism, culminating with the pop star descending a stripper pole to Hell on his way to lap dance a horny Satan, whom he kills before brandishing his horns. "Industry Baby" is no tamer: It's a riff on Frank Darabont's 1994 prison flick . While that film was centered around a safe, platonic narrative of interracial male bonding behind bars, Lil Nas X's update carries a pro-bail-reform message and centers images of
