Lil Nas X's latest music video has gotten many people fired up, but the rapper can take the heat and dish out some of his own.
The 21-year-old Grammy winner clapped back at critics of "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)," which contains religious and sexually explicit imagery. It depicts the star wearing boxer-briefs and thigh-high black patent leather boots, pole-dancing in Hell and then giving the devil a lap dance.
"Y'all saying a gay n---a twerking on a cgi satan is the end of times," Lil Nas X tweeted on Friday, March 26, "like slavery and the holocaust didn't happen."
He also tweeted, "There is a mass shooting every week that our government does nothing to stop. me sliding down a cgi pole isn't what's destroying society."
"The system is targeting kids," one critic tweeted. "Lil Nas X's fanbase is mostly children. They did the same thing with Miley Cyrus after Hannah Montana."
Lil Nas X responded, "There was no system involved. i made the decision to create the music video. i am an adult. i am not gonna spend my entire career trying to cater to your children. that is your job."
The song "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)" is currently rising fast on the streaming charts. The track is about a man that Lil Nas X, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, met in 2020, a year after he came out publicly. On Thursday, March 25, the rapper posted on Instagram a letter he wrote to his 14-year-old self.
"I wrote a song with our name in it," it read. "it's about a guy i met last summer. i know we promised to never come out publicly, 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."
On Saturday, March 27, Lil Nas X tweeted to his critics again. He wrote, "i spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the s--t y'all preached would happen to me because i was gay. so i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves."