Lil Nas X is Corny
A Reaction to His Atrocious New Song and Video "J Christ"
I just listened to the new Lil Nas X song “J Christ”, and have severely negative thoughts about it. But before I get into that, I want to quickly refresh everyone on this man’s career.
(To read just about the new song and video, skip to the headline “J Christ”)
The Old Testament of Lil Nas X
Starting off as a Nicki Minaj Stan account runner, Montero Lamar Hill was a normal kid in 2018. This was soon to change.
His first single “Old Town Road” was seemingly released independently and free of record label push. It was a passionate young man singing about horses over a guitar loop lifted from a Nine Inch Nails track and some 808s. It was silly, fun and catchy, but many people forget that it was the removal from Billboard’s Top 100 Country charts that really got things turning for him. Billboard’s disqualification brought about accusations of institutional racism, prompting even more news outlets and cultural commentators to push this story. Eventually, the supposed grassroots support for Nas X led to a collaboration with actual country legend Billy Ray Cyrus. Then he came out as gay and won a Country Music Award, prompting everyone to collectively pat themselves on the back in the name of inclusively. He got signed and of course his label began to see the remix potential of this song, and how that was adding to the overall streaming of the song. As a result, numerous remixes began to drop with Young Thug, Diplo and others. The song eventually got so popular through this sneaky method that it became the “biggest song of all time”.
While I found this all to be very cute at the time that it was happening, in retrospect I find this entire schtick to be really corny. It felt like Twitter and the rest of internet was rallying around this dude to make him a superstar, but after he actually had to flesh out this career as a musician in the aftermath of all the hype, all I’ve seen is corny bullshit and pseudo controversy from top to bottom.
The EP that followed up “Old Town Road”, entitled 7, was a steaming pile of dogshit, and I really mean that. Here are actually lyrics from his second single “Panini”, “Ayy, Panini, don't you be a meanie / Thought you wanted me to go up / Why you tryna keep me teeny?” Pure trash. “Rodeo” with Cardi B is a sad attempt to try to re-spark the country “magic” of his first single, but of course it’s a dime-a-dozen Take A Day Trip beat with a mid guitar sample. After this song didn’t get him another viral moment, he simply abandoned country music after making the whole world advocate for him to be “taken seriously” as a country musician. This was maybe my first indication that this man was not a musician, but a performance artist grifter. He is the musical equivalent to an NFT. The EP starts and ends with “Old Town Road” as well. I would give this EP an F straight up. Even so, the Grammy’s decided to reward him and his lazy collective of producers and writers with a fucking Album of the Year nomination in 2020? Like why?
His extremely overrated debut Montero was the absolute last straw for me. I felt like I was living in a simulation seeing reputable people like Anthony Fantano actually buy into this garbage. It was like every single outlet on Earth decided to give him a three and a half star rating. I gave him a D. And of course the Grammys couldn’t get enough of it.
Just like “Panini”, the two lead singles “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and “INDUSTRY BABY” had music videos that were nothing but green screen nightmares. They are demographicless and directionless, stoking controversy and throwing vulgar homoeroticism at us all while sounding like music made for elementary schoolers. It’s like the aesthetic of Sharkboy and Lava Girl, the music of Kidz Bop and then gratuitous gay sex. I’m not going to be moralistic here or play into the game of “being offended” by the way. I’m not a 40 IQ dummy like Kai Cenat. I’m bisexual, I find Lil Nas X to be attractive, but I find his music and visuals to be incoherent surface level nonsense packaged and sold to us as edgy and irreverent. I feel like news outlets hold this guy up to be the next Elton John or something. The gay community (which I’m apart of by the way) deserves better than this.
Not to mention, this man has no fucking talent at all. Every live performance I’ve seen him do sucks, badly. The only thing noteworthy about his BET performance in 2020 was the 0.005 second kiss male kiss that happened between him and a backup dancer. The costumes were tacky, his singing was atrocious, he couldn’t dance to save his life. His entire persona is all “controversy”, memes, fashion, production, autotune, ghostwriters, top liners, backup dancers, bright lights, production design and 3D renderings. It’s all a big circus show that has the most painfully mediocre performer in the center of it all.
J Christ
That leads me to “J Christ”. Between him and Doja Cat we are on track to ruining Catholic iconography as an eternal aesthetic. People like Madonna, Trent Reznor, Lady Gaga, GHOST!, Type O Negative, Playboi Carti, and MOTHERMARY have worked meticulously to continue to keep the torch of sacrilege burning. Just for these two buffoons to come and piss all over it until the flame begins to dwindle. Never have I been so bored with Christian trolling and disrespect.
The music video starts off with, of course, a green screen where we see all these generic looking “apostles” walking through the Windows 98 serene field. For some reason that is never addressed one of them looks kind of like Obama. Following this is the “song”, with possibly the worst Tay Keith ripoff beat I’ve ever heard. It’s just painfully beige. Nas X looks like dollar store Jonathan Van Ness with long nails and a golden collar that says “SEX”. So original love that. Generic bars about making people turn their heads at the club, taking over the world and being “ready”. Ready for what exactly I really don’t know. The video is an unamusing tour of all the “controversies” that him and his PR teams manufactured. We get the Satan Shoes, the lap dance devil, all the hits We get more wasted religious iconography of sheep, the crucifixion, the flood of Noah’s Ark for some reason, that’s Old Testament stuff that had nothing to do with Christ. It’s all just really carelessly sequenced and thrown together with lot of shots of extras surprise reacting to everything that’s going on. Anyone that’s offended by any of this has to either be a hardcore Christian or a chat bot that he been trained to do so.
To me, the only offensive thing about this whole display is the chorus. “Is he ‘bout to give them something viral? / Is he ‘bout to hit ‘em with the high note?” The answer is ugh, technically, and no. After 5 years of being in the industry, this man STILL cannot sing! He wants us all to pay attention to him and allows himself to be put alongside people like Elton John but he doesn’t even take the risk and go for the high note that he’s signing about! It just sounds flat and autotuned, like everything else he’s ever had someone else write for him. If he sold his soul to Satan to make this lil bro should go get it back.
I give this song an F. This is a flop and I don’t care how well it charts or what any other critic says about it. This is not art, this is ass.