With an ensemble of chart-topping hits and hundreds of millions of streams in its first week alone, Lil Nas X’s debut album “Montero” proves that he deeply understands the secrets of Internet virality.
When Nas released his debut, recording-smashing single “Old Town Road,” a country-rap hybrid that was America’s most played track for 19 straight weeks, most were sure that he would be a one-hit-wonder. The sheer novelty of “Old Town Road” coupled with its rapid spread through social media and onto the Billboard charts seemed like a happy accident.
However, this could not be further from the truth.
“A lot of people like to say… a kid accidentally got it. It’s like no, this was no accident,” Nas told the New York Times in May 2019. After Nas spent months creating over 200 Twitter memes to publicize “Old Town Road” (usually making light of the song’s country nature), TikTok users picked up the torch and ran with it, resulting in the song’s massive popularity.
When the fanfare for “Old Town Road” died down, Lil Nas X had to respond to the major question that loomed over him: could he do it again?
Nas’s follow-up 2019 EP “7” came and went, with two out of the seven tracks being versions of the already stale “Old Town Road” and only one other track, “Panini,” managing to find commercial footing. Winter 2020’s “Holiday” attempted to be a revitalized Christmas jingle, but despite its elaborate music video, it fizzled out at #37 on the Billboard Hot 100.
Nine months ago, Lil Nas X’s career seemed headed to the same purgatory as Soulja Boy, who similarly revolutionized the way music was shared online, a decade earlier.
“Montero” is a defiant rejection of Lil Nas X’s career trajectory. During his marketing for his debut album, Nas identified what made “Old Town Road” popular, then took it to new extremes. A key example of this is the title track for “Montero,” also known as “Call Me By Your Name”.
With “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” Nas pulled out all the stops. Apart from using a Super Bowl commercial as a teaser, the LGBTQ+ anthem featured a music video designed to shock the masses.
The video features a heavy Biblical backbone with Nas falling from heaven and into hell. The song’s audio finishes before the video, forcing the 359 million viewers to be left focusing on Nas as he performs sexual acts on the devil.
To go along with the Satanic imagery in the “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” music video, Lil Nas X, in collaboration with the company MSCHF, released the Satan Shoes.
The Satan Shoes were a pair of black and red Nike Air Max 97s–but with a few changes: there were only 666 pairs made, each with Satanic symbols, Biblical verses referencing the devil and a drop of human blood were infused on each sole of the shoe.
Nas’s heavy association with the devil immediately drew outrage from the conservative Christian crowd, and Nas even got into a Twitter war with South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem. In addition, Nike sued MSCHF–the company responsible for marketing the shoes–for trademark infringement, drawing further media attention. However, the planned controversy worked. “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”, debuted at the top of the Billboard Hot 100.
The founder of MSCHF, Gabriel Whaley, played a large role in constructing the narrative of “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”
Whaley is cognizant of what it takes to rise to the top of the charts, as exemplified in a 2019 interview with Campaign US. “I think we’ve hit a peak where the noise is so great on the platforms, and where the barriers to create and distribute content are so low, that it’s nearly impossible to stand out using conventional means,” Whaley said in the interview.
The unconventional means used by Nas and MSCHF had an impact that went beyond YouTube and into the ears of Gen-Z and millennials.
Senior Rocco D’Antico is a fan of Nas and the track, but he has not seen the video. “I guess [“Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”] just showed up in my Spotify recommendations one day and I started listening to it. I heard everyone talking about the video, but I had no desire to watch it. The video sounded really weird,” D’Antico explained.
Featuring a music video almost as controversial as “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” “Industry Baby” was the second single released in promotion for his debut album. While “Industry Baby” did not have quite the extreme rollout as the first album single, it still charted #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 in early September.
“Montero” is on pace to sell 140,000 units in its debut week, a stellar figure for a fresh face like Nas. Regardless of if it will be able to beat out Drake’s “Certified Lover Boy,” “Montero” is anything but a failure.
It is hard to argue that Nas does not know what he is doing. Despite seemingly coming from nowhere, he recognized the Internet’s low barrier for entry and seized the opportunity. Lil Nas X has mastered the art of going viral, a skill he has shown us several times and one he likely will continue to demonstrate for years to come.
