Having your pants split open on national TV while you’re trying to look sexy is pretty mortifying. But to hear Lil Nas X tell it, his wardrobe malfunction on Saturday Night Live in May wasn’t nearly as bad as something else that happened that same night. In a new feature interview with the New York Times magazine, Lil Nas opens up about the second potentially ego-crushing incident that evening.
Other than feeling an unexpected breeze down there, Lil Nas said the performance was amazing and he felt great, so great he wanted to hit on someone that night. So he did, sending a message to a person he’d already been chatting with online. But according to the Times, the person he hit up “respectfully knocked that shot out of the air.”
Though they were apparently super flattered, they revealed that they already had a boyfriend, so Lil Nas X was left respecting their honesty, but also feeling a bit bummed. “I was like, ‘Damn, you’re that loyal?’” the artist said, noting that “a lot” of people just “throw themselves” at him these days. “I love it. You forget sometimes that people are, like, really loyal, and it’s like, I want to do that.”
After proving once again that he’s not a one-hit wonder with his latest smash “Montero,” Lil Nas said the polite no thanks was a hit to his ego for sure. “No matter what I do or accomplish in this life or whatever, I’m never going to get everything I want,” he concluded. The old Nas would have cried himself to sleep and obsessed over the rejection, but new Nas understands that that’s the way it goes sometimes.
“I was like, hold on,” he said confidently. “We’re not doing this this time.”
According to the Times, Lil Nas left the SNL afterparty and promptly gave himself a mirror pep talk in his hotel room about his great performance. “‘Don’t let this one disappointment ruin everything! Be grateful, Lil Nas X!’” he told himself. “‘Be here and now!’”
As for what fans can expect from his upcoming full-length Montero album, Lil Nas gave the Times a preview by playing them a new song called “Industry Baby,” which features the defiant lyrics: “And this one is for the champions/ I ain’t lost since I began, yuh/ Funny how you said it was the end, yuh/ Then I went did it again.”
The piece also dives into the same-sex kiss Lil Nas dropped into the end of his “Montero” performance at the BET Awards, and how he’s making space for queer artists in the mainstream of a genre that hasn’t always been inviting to the LGBTQ community. “What makes Lil Nas X so extraordinary is how brave he is at being so outwardly gay within the urban music world,” Elton John told the Times. “That’s where he’s truly groundbreaking.”
