Lil Nas X's ‘MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)’ music video was SO worth the wait

“Old Town Road” rapper Lil Nas X has FINALLY (after like a year of teasing) dropped his much-hyped and much-anticipated single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” and the accompanying music video at the same time. Feel free to thank the Lord and the devil for this one, because Lil Nas X is certainly close to both of them in this creative, dazzling, and ornate video. We are low-key speechless.

“In life, we hide the parts of ourselves we don’t want the world to see,” he begins in the voiceover intro. “We lock them away. We tell them, ‘No.’ We banish them. But here, we don’t.” 

Here is Montero, which is also his given name (Montero Lamar Hill). Thus begins the sexiest and most elaborate visual buffet ever squeezed into three minutes.

Lil Nas X makes out with a snake version of himself (an obvious Adam and Eve reference), then he’s put on trial by a bunch of lookalikes dressed as Marie Antoinette, and then when we think he might ascend to heaven, he hops on the stripper pole and dances his way down to hell, all while wearing a fierce pair of patent-leather thigh-high stiletto boots. 

Once he’s down in hell, Lucifer himself gets The.Best.Lapdance – so much so that it kills Beelzebub and Nas takes the devil’s horns for himself. 

There are lots of layers to the themes of the song and the video, but as Lil Nas has said himself, it's mostly about claiming and celebrating his queer identity. There’s an obvious reference to Call Me By Your Name and that coupled with Lil Nas X using his given name as the title, along with the costuming and choreography -- it's all stunning and to "further the agenda" of making queer people feel seen and accepted. 

In an Instagram post, Lil Nas X explained it all in a letter to his younger self.

Writing to 14-year-old Montero, he says: "I wrote a song with our name in it. It’s about a guy I met last summer. I know we promised to never come out publicly, 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.”

He continued, “You see this is very scary for me, people will be angry, they will say I’m pushing an agenda. But the truth is, I am. The agenda to make people stay the f**k out of other people’s lives and stop dictating who they should be. Sending you love from the future. -LNX” 

All of these woven themes, references, and images aren’t lost on his fans, because they are LIVING for the song and video, and the powerful message it sends about being Black and queer today.

In the first eight hours since the video went live, the song has already entered the Top 10 US iTunes charts, and has over 1 million YouTube views. The message is getting out there and it’s on repeat. We love to see it. 

BEFORE YOU GO: Brooke Lynn Hytes on the queens she took inspo from for her new single

[video_embed id='2168532']BEFORE YOU GO: Brooke Lynn Hytes on the queens she took inspo from for her new single [/video_embed]