Lil Nas X has a new song out — and to mark the occasion, he’s penned an emotional letter to his 14-year-old self.
Taking to Twitter, the rapper — who publicly came out in 2019 — wrote about his past fear of making his sexuality public, and his reasons for wanting to write his new song, “MONTERO” (the artist’s real name is Montero Lamar Hill).
“Dear 14 year old montero,” he wrote. “i wrote a song with our name in it. 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.”
“You see this is very scary for me,” Lil Nas X continued, “people will be angry, they will say i’m pushing an agenda. but the truth is, i am. the agenda to make people stay the fuck out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be. sending you love from the future.”
Lil Nas X’s new song comes with a music video that starts in a purple Garden of Eden.
“In life, we hide the parts of ourselves that we don’t want the world to see,” says a voice-over. “We lock them away. We tell them no. We banish them. But here, we don’t. Welcome to Montero.” The video sees the artist being evicted from the garden and tried in a court of stone statues before descending into hell, where he dances on the lap of the devil, kills him, and then steals his horns.
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In the hours since it was posted, Lil Nas X’s open letter has been retweeted over 25,000 times. The music video for “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)” already has around a million views.