no͞oz

Lil Nas X Told Being Gay Not OK Before Coming Out

By DNA Online Coordinator

Posted on August 16, 2019

Share

Tweet

Share

Share

Email

In an interview with Time Magazine Lil Nas X opened up about his decision to come out after he was told being gay would “never be ok.”

The 20-year-old singer said after being told that he kept his sexuality under wraps.

“I know the people who listen to this the most, and they’re not accepting of homosexuality.

“I never would have done that if I wasn’t in a way pushed by the universe,” he said.

View this post on Instagram

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

After seeing Pride celebrations Lil Nas X decided he had to come out.

‘In June, I’m seeing Pride flags everywhere and seeing couples holding hands,’ he said before adding: ‘Little stuff like that.’

Lil Nas made the announcement on Twitter where he shared a picture of the rainbow flag with the words: ‘Thought I’d made it obvious’.