Lil Nas X Talks Coming Out In TIME Magazine Interview

Crossover artist Lil Nas X is currently featured on the cover of Time magazine, and in the accompanying interview, the 20-year-old rapper opened up about his decision to come out as gay earlier this summer.

Though Lil Nas didn’t initially plan on making the announcement, the fact that his inescapable hit “Old Town Road” – featuring Billy Ray Cyrus – was dominating Billboard charts and radio airwaves during June’s Pride Month made him think again. According to the Georgia native, he was hesitant about coming out because it was instilled in him from a young age that homosexuality “is never going to be OK.” Plus, he feared he might lose fans if he shared his truth.

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When @lilnasx's debut single “Old Town Road” exploded online early this year and began climbing the charts, industry prognosticators anticipated a quick rise and fall. It’s now the longest-running No. 1 song in history, having occupied the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 weeks. It’s been streamed more than a billion times on @spotify alone. All of this has made “Old Town Road” the defining sound of the year, a slurry, genre-busting interpolation of two quintessential American musical genres: #country and hip-hop. Yet even from his perch, writes Andrew R. Chow, Lil Nas is still an outlier. There aren’t many black stars in country #music; there aren’t many queer stars in #hiphop. There aren’t many queer black stars in American culture, point-blank. The fact that Lil Nas has risen so far and so fast testifies not only to his skill, but also to the erosion of the systems that for generations kept #artists like him on the sidelines. At a time when debates about categorization and identity are ubiquitous, Lil Nas X represents a more unified vision of the future, one in which a young #queer black man can dominate popular #culture by being unapologetically himself. “Everything lined up for this moment to take me to this place,” he says now. “Not to sound self-centered, but it feels like I’m chosen, in a way, to do this stuff.” Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @kelianne for TIME; animation by @brobeldesign; “Old Town Road” (p) 2019 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

A post shared by TIME (@time) on Aug 15, 2019 at 5:08am PDT

“I know the people who listen to this the most, and they’re not accepting of homosexuality,” he said, later explaining that seeing celebrations of love during June helped his worries subside. “I never would have done that if I wasn’t in a way pushed by the universe. In June, I’m seeing Pride flags everywhere and seeing couples holding hands — little stuff like that.” While he has quickly embraced his sexual identity, Lil Nas admitted to Time that fame – and the anxiety he experiences because of it – has been tougher to come to terms with.

For more regarding Lil Nas X’s rise to fame and subsequent coming out, read the whole interview via TIME magazine here.

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