Lil Nas X had a candid conversation with two of his youngest fans.
The Grammy Award-winning “Old Town Road” singer appeared on Wednesday’s episode of the kid-hosted YouTube series “Arts & Raps,” answering questions from child actor Dilan Patton and co-host Zaria Kelley.
As the three painted portraits, one of the most meaningful moments of the discussion occurred when Lil Nas X was asked to explain what coming out of the closet means.
“It means you’re like, ‘Hey everybody, I’m this thing, and you guys didn’t even know that, but now you know,’” the record-breaking Billboard chart-topper, who came out as a member of the LGTBQ+ community in June 2020, reflected.
The grown-up “closet” terminology didn’t translate to the young hosts, with Patton revealing his own “closet story” of locking his brother in the closet, and then explaining with a straight face: “And we close the door and blink the lights on and off, and then say ’666′ or ‘Bloody Mary.’ And ... [my brother] swore he saw something.”
“That’s exactly what happened to me,” Lil Nas X deadpanned after bursting into laughter. “That’s exactly what I meant when I said I was coming out of the closet,” which caused the entire room to erupt in laughter.
With last month’s release of his new No. 1 song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” Lil Nas X shared a letter he wrote to himself about coming out publicly, addressing the note to “14-year-old Montero.”
“I know we promised to never come out publicly,” Lil Nas X wrote, in part. “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.”
The 22-year-old Columbia Records artist and New York Times bestselling children’s book author, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, was also asked by Kelley what it means to be “unapologetically you,” to which he replied, “It means just doing yourself at all costs, no matter who’s watching.”
“It gets really hard, because everybody in the world, we always think about what everybody else is thinking about us,” he continued. “Sometimes, we forget to think about what we think about ourselves, you know?”
Lil Nas X added that, while he “won’t say that I don’t care [about what others think about me,] I’m able to care and push it off of my shoulder.”
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