Lil Nas X
Born April 9, 1999
Lil Nas X — born Montero Lamar Hill in Atlanta, Georgia — became one of the defining pop figures of the late 2010s and early 2020s, first by crashing through the walls between country and hip-hop with the longest-running number-one single in Billboard Hot 100 history, and then by reinventing himself as an openly gay provocateur whose music and imagery pushed back against the homophobia he encountered growing up.
The Song That Changed Everything
Born on April 9, 1999, Montero Hill grew up in Atlanta and Lithia Springs, Georgia, raised between divorced parents and largely by his grandmother. He attended the University of West Georgia briefly before dropping out to pursue music. In late 2018, he uploaded a self-produced demo called "Old Town Road" — a country-trap hybrid he built from a Dutch producer's sample — to YouTube and SoundCloud for about thirty dollars. It went viral on TikTok in early 2019. By April 2019, after a brief Billboard controversy about its genre classification, a remix featuring Billy Ray Cyrus sent it to number one on the Hot 100, where it stayed for nineteen consecutive weeks — breaking the all-time record previously held by Mariah Carey and Lil Bow Wow.
Coming Out and Speaking Out
On the last day of Pride Month 2019, Lil Nas X came out as gay via a pair of tweets, making him one of the most prominent openly gay artists in hip-hop at the time. He followed with the album Montero (2021), which contained "Montero (Call Me By Your Name)" — a song addressed to a lover — with a music video depicting him sliding down a stripper pole into Hell and giving Satan a lap dance, winning a Grammy for Best Pop Solo Performance. "Industry Baby," featuring Jack Harlow and produced by Kanye West, went to number one. The album was praised as an act of self-liberation and cultural identity as much as a pop record. His social media presence — ironic, funny, unfiltered — became as widely followed as his music.
Did You Know?
When Billboard removed "Old Town Road" from its Hot Country Songs chart in March 2019, citing that it didn't embrace enough elements of today's country music, the public backlash was immediate and enormous. The decision was widely interpreted as racially motivated, and the controversy generated more media coverage than most artists see in a career. Lil Nas X responded with typical humor — quoting Billboard's own removal notice as if it were a compliment — and the song went on to top every chart and become one of the best-known singles of the decade.
Legacy
Lil Nas X has won two Grammy Awards and multiple MTV VMAs, and stands among the most commercially successful and culturally discussed young artists of his generation. He grew up listening to Nicki Minaj and Tyler the Creator — artists who also used provocative imagery and outsider identity to force the industry to pay attention — and consciously followed in that tradition. He was born into a world that had not made room for him and spent his career rearranging furniture until it did. His debut album Montero debuted at number two on the Billboard 200.