How Lil Nas X’s debut album Montero makes the rapper a sensational figure

Lil Nas X’s debut album Montero has garnered a lot of criticism, though positive. People wondered how he has upended hip-hop with his LGBT-positive lyrics becoming such a phenomenon, only after making music for three years.

No doubt, Montero is the third major rap release of the month after Drake and Kanye West’s latest efforts, and if Lil Nas X never quite steals their thunder, the thunder is definitely within him.

His debut album Montero arrives accompanied by not one, but two huge advertising tie-ins. In the first commercial, he shills Taco Bell’s Toasted Breakfast Burritos in a pink pompadour wig. Then there’s a series of adverts for Uber Eats, in which his comic foil is Elton John, one of Montero’s guest stars, albeit a low-key one, contributing piano.

BABY MONTERO IS HERE!!! pic.twitter.com/9TzhXDuyPE

— MONTERO ? (@LilNasX) September 17, 2021

These adverts are big-money gigs that Americans believed you only get if you’re in pop’s upper echelons, which Lil Nas X undoubtedly is.

Since he bought a beat online for $30 and turned it into Old Town Road – which became the longest-running No 1 single in US history, sold 18.5m copies and provoked a debate about genre boundaries and country music’s attitude to race –

The 22-year-old has been a constant presence at the top of the charts: five more platinum singles, and so many awards and nominations they require their own Wikipedia page.