This uncommon level of transparency from a black gay male hip-hop star is not only refreshing but extremely meaningful as his hit song “Old Town Road” just this week toppled one of the longest-running records in music history. Lil Nas X faced the decision to come out head-on - knowing he would face criticism - without forfeiting any part of his persona. What makes the manner in which Lil Nas X decided to come out so interesting is that he was able to control his own narrative without going into hiding and leaving his words up for interpretation, like his industry peer Frank Ocean, or by making conspicuously carnal and sometimes contradictory statements about queerness, in the vein of someone like Tyler, the Creator. And though there are holdovers from that bygone era of making a declarative statement about your sexuality on glossy magazine covers - like Caitlyn Jenner’s 2015 cover of Vanity Fair - that format is typically reserved for A-listers. Prior to that, The Hate U Give actor Amandla Stenberg proclaimed her bisexuality in a video on Snapchat, signaling that this trend of coming out online was definitely here to stay. In 2018, the singer Kehlani came out as queer on Twitter because of fans’ relentless curiosity surrounding her sexuality. In the two decades since that unprecedented event, the coming-out game has evolved with the rise of social media. The messaging then was clear-cut: “Yep, I’m gay,” DeGeneres’s 1997 Time cover read in big red lettering with the star squatting and flashing a big smile. It appears as though celebrities still need to “officially” come out to the mainstream - by actually defining their labels - even if their hyper-attuned fans already know exactly what they were trying to say.Ĭoming-out narratives have changed since the days when stars like Ellen DeGeneres and Lance Bass boldly and definitively announced their sexual orientations in the late ’90s and mid-’00s. But even after he essentially memed himself on Twitter, something he’s been excellent at for a long time, he still had to officially say the words “ I am gay” during a televised BBC interview on July 5 for the world to take his announcement seriously. In his joking and Extremely Online way, Lil Nas X is challenging what it means to come out on the public stage - especially now, when fans feel their proximity to their favorite stars’ public lives must equal an all-access pass to their personal lives as well. In a follow-up tweet later that day, he wrote, “deadass thought i made it obvious” with an attachment of his EP’s cover art depicting a building broadcasting the colors of the pride flag. The ambiguity of the rapper’s word choice seemed to have been intentional. The word “gay” did not appear anywhere in Lil Nas X’s initial tweets, which prompted varying headlines that read the star “ seemingly” came out while others straight-up questioned whether he’d actually done the thing. He then instructed fans to listen to “C7osure (You Like),” a track from his debut EP 7, with a special emphasis that his legion of loyal supporters do it before “this month ends.” He signed off that tweet with three emojis, including one of the rainbow, a symbol famously synonymous with queerness. “Some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone no more,” the “Old Town Road” rapper announced to his growing following of 2 million people on Twitter on June 30. Or, at least, that’s what it seemed like. This June, which marked the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall riots, 20-year-old Lil Nas X, one of hip-hop’s most interesting new artists, came out. But in a lot of ways, this story may well have been written about Lil Nas X now in 2019. This was a blind item about Frank Ocean, then a quickly rising R&B star who would later address rumors about his sexuality on social media.
“After keeping folks guessing in 2011, this soul singer will answer any questions about which team he’s swinging for with his upcoming musical release.” “There’s been plenty of speculation about this hot young r&b star’s sexuality, but most of it has been drowned out by the adoration by fans and famous alike,” wrote the gossip site Bossip in 2012.