In the music video for "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)," Lil Nas X opens the gates of his visual empire. "In life, we hide the parts of ourselves we don’t want the world to see," he says in the introduction. "But here, we don’t. Welcome to Montero." What follows is a brazen voyage into the depths of hell.
Co-directed by Lil Nas X and Tanu Muino, the video is a theatrical extravaganza that stars the rapper in nearly every role: a devious snake, a banished Adam, a crowd of stone spectators. Lil Nas X pole dances his way to the throne and secures his spot, displacing the devil with a spicy lap dance and a swift decapitation.
It was unabashedly sexual and provocative, a pertinent introduction to MONTERO, his eponymous debut album (the musician was born Montero Lamar Hill). The video spectacle sparked conversation far beyond its comment section and was boosted, in part, by backlash from people weighing in on his queer identity. More importantly, MONTERO received an outpouring of encouragement from the communities who encounter the same adversity.
Lil Nas X stretched the bounds of both his identity and his artistry at every turn, expertly spinning the backlash to "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)" into a multi-layered promotional spectacle. "MONTERO" has been nominated for both Record and Song of the Year, and the LP is up for Album of the Year.
That’s the thing about Lil Nas X: The over-the-top music videos and quick-witted Twitter clapbacks are all gasoline poured onto the already blazing fire of his mere existence. To have an artist not only exist, but excel, at the intersection of Blackness and queerness, as both a rapper and a pop star, is nothing short of revolutionary. When the CGI stripper pole burst through the clouds in "MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)," it shattered the glass ceiling on its way down — and he was just getting started.
After unveiling an unauthorized limited edition pair of Nike Air Max 97s — made with a drop of real human blood — he flipped the Nike lawsuit that followed into an elaborate courtroom skit announcing "Industry Baby," his collaboration with Jack Harlow that’s nominated for Best Melodic Rap Performance.
More frenzy followed the "Industry Baby" music video, particularly in response to a scene where Lil Nas X dances naked in a bright pink prison shower with half a dozen male dancers. Recreating the scene on the MTV Video Music Awards stage, Nas reinforced his commitment to performance as an art and bold representation.
Speaking with GRAMMY.com, Lil Nas X’s visual collaborators — choreographer Sean Bankhead, "Industry Baby" music video director Christian Breslauer, Roc Nation Creative Director of Live Performances Jed Skrzypczak and skit director Adrian Per — about the visually distinct MONTERO, creating career-defining performances on stage and online, and celebrating Lil Nas X as an unflinching Black, gay pop-rap star.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Lil Nas X Writes His Own Music Video Treatments
Sean Bankhead (Choreographer): I am very inspired by how creative he is. Because I don't think people really understand that Nas writes his own treatments for every single music video. So these aren't directors coming to him with ideas. I've seen him sit in the corner of rehearsal. And I'm like, What are you doing? He's like, "I'm just getting ideas for a music video." And then it turns out to be "Industry Baby." And it's so refreshing to see an artist who actually has creative vision and actually cares about all those details — from the rollout to all the skits that he does, to now mix it with dance and choreography and a big stage performance.
Christian Breslauer ("Industry Baby" Director): Nas’ original idea was generally close to the music video you saw, except if you watch the whole music video as it exists now, where our video ends is where the middle of the section right before Jack Harlow's verse [would have been]. His verse was basically originally set up in Nas’ treatment as like: they burst out of jail and then they rob a bank. And then Nas is surfing on top of a bus. It was very grand. So [Lil Nas X’s video commissioner] asked me, "Do you have a way to take the general idea of what he's trying to do and make it doable?"
The Iconic "Industry Baby" Shower Scene Almost Didn’t Happen
Christian Breslauer: Nas originally had a lunch room performance scene, but I was like, I don't really feel it’s grand enough, like it sells enough. I pitched him the idea [of tackling] the prison shower scene.
He initially was like, "I don't know if I want to do it." And then after sitting with it, he all of a sudden switched up in the middle of our meeting, and he was just like, "You know, actually yeah, let's do it." He had already been practicing the choreo with Sean. And he had a whole thing for that moment.
Sean Bankhead: Me and [Breslauer], were like, it would be dope if they would be dancing in the shower. And they were like, "Well, if you're dancing in the shower, you got to be butt naked." But it’s those moments that Nas is like, "Yeah, f*** it, let's do it."
He’s The Mastermind Behind The Elaborate Rollout Skits, Including Giving Birth To Montero
Adrian Per (MONTERO Skit Director): Here’s the thing about Nas. Not to discredit myself or anybody else on the team, we all give our own flavor to things, but ultimately, almost 99 percent of everything was his inception. He is such a visionary, such a creative, that it almost feels like we're all just an extension of him and his ideas.
Christian Breslauer: He's a marketing genius when it comes to that. All that stuff is him, the whole shoe scandal and leading it into the court date into "Industry Baby," that's all his marketing. The kid gets it, he’s smart as s***. And that’s where I think for this generation, he's going to be a superstar because of that. He just gets it.
He was like a professional troll [on Twitter before "Old Town Road"], he knows how to stir the pot. I’m just a creative mind and can come up with ideas that give the moment. And then him just knowing how to take that little piece of content that I create, and blow it up and stretch it 8,000 ways…. I don't think there's anybody who does that.
Adrian Per: He basically came to me with this concept, [saying]: "I want to give birth to my album. We’ve got to make it funny. It's got to be in a hospital or something." We did that entire skit with no script. Everything was on the fly. But Nas is so good at what he does — acting, being a troll, all of that — it was easy. We did everything I believe in six hours when something like that would probably be a 12 hour day.
Everything has been done before to a certain capacity, but this idea of his producers [Take A Daytrip] rolling him into a delivery room, then we pull the vinyl record out and it’s shining rainbow colors to represent his sexuality [hadn’t been done before]. Having a good song is barely half the battle, getting people to listen to it, getting people’s attention, the life after the song drops — everything he comes up with supports all of those different facets.
Lil Nas X’s Cementing His Pop Star Status As An Explosive Performer
Sean Bankhead: Performance is a huge part of being a pop star: how you perform, your dancers, what your dancers look like, how your stage moves, how you walk, how you talk. You can have hit music, but we want the VMA performances. We want the BET-winning, the VMA-winning music video. We want the ones that are nominated for GRAMMYs. We want to keep being invited back to the GRAMMY stage because the last time we came…we shut it down.
Jed Skrzypczak (Roc Nation Creative Director): Now, a lot of people just scale down. They just do small performances versus [asking]: What would Britney do in the 2000s? Or all of those crazy Missy Elliott performances? That’s always the energy and craziness we try to bring on a stage. We always compare [Lil Nas X] to who the best live female performers are, because they [set] this standard of live performance. And that's what we try to achieve with that as well.
Sean Bankhead: There are no Black male rappers who are doing that at all. And so take the gay part out of it and he's still breaking another mold, where he has dope visuals, dope choreography, dope dancers, and really takes risks. He rehearses really hard and is learning how to be a better artist in that regard, with the rapping and dancing at the same time.
His “SNL” Debut Was A Bold Statement In More Ways Than One
Jed Skrzypczak: "Call Me By Your Name" was such a big song everywhere and there was already a visual aspect of it that people were already connected to from the music video. But ["Saturday Night Live"] was our moment to introduce him to a bigger audience.
Sean Bankhead: I think it was the first time that he really trusted a choreographer who was young, Black and gay as well – who understood the pop space and who also has pushed a lot of envelopes, if you will, when it comes to the risky stage performances or the provocative music videos.
I was like, "So do you really want to be that be that n****? Do you want to represent and be provocative? And do things that you haven’t done?" He was like, "Absolutely." I said, do you want to swing on a pole? He said, absolutely. I said, Do you want to kiss a boy? He's like, "Absolutely."
Jed Skrzypczak: We had a whole conversation about celebrating queerness, and giving a platform to and also celebrating people of color and Blackness. He just wants to give a platform to the dancers and performers, who usually are overlooked or not included and don't have as many opportunities.
Sean Bankhead: I feel very special, because I've been able to bring a lot of young, gay, cool, Black and people of color dancers around him so that he has some culture, he has a hand in the pot. This industry can be very whitewashed, and he's in the pop space; he's not really dealing with the ratchet stuff that a lot of the Black artists have to deal with. He has — excuse my French — a white following, a white team, he gets that treatment. So it's important that him being an openly gay Black male, he still has that surrounding him, which comes with his dancers.
The BET Awards Kiss Was A Close-Kept Secret
Jed Skrzypczak: With the BET Awards performance, we were like: we have to show people that Nas is becoming a king of pop music. That’s how we connected it to the "Remember The Time" Michael Jackson references. We wanted to pay homage to the music video and connect it to the already existing aesthetic that we’re tying into the performances of the song.
The funny thing about the kiss is that almost nobody knew about it. There was only a really small group of people, even on Nas’ team — even BET didn't know about it. So that was even more pressure on everyone, because we really didn’t know how people were gonna react. And it turned out to be such an amazing and big and important moment. After that performance, so many people reached out to the whole team, to Nas, even to me, saying how important it was for them to see representation like this on TV because when they grew up, they never had a moment like this.
Sean Bankhead: I love to shake the table because that's what I grew up on in pop culture. I grew up watching Madonna and Britney doing their thing. And I’m so bored with performances and pop culture; with shock value for a cause and not just, let’s just do it just because. We knew people were going to talk about it as soon as they started humping and jiving on each other. But two performances prior to that, I believe, was Roddy Ricch — the girls were rubbing up and down each other and no one said anything about it.
Jed Skrzypczak: At the beginning, when Nas performs, you can see how he acts — he's slightly nervous about it, because it's so much pressure on him. He’s so young and already so experienced, but there's still so much pressure on this stage [in front of] all those people who sometimes have completely different views than him.
Sean Bankhead: We want to keep challenging those those norms and keep pushing the boundaries, but still making sure that it’s not stupid. It’s actually: If we're going to do this, let's make sure it's the best performance. Let's make sure that there are iconic dance moments and there are iconic sound bites or other things that can go with a Britney-esque, "I'm a Slave 4 U" type performance.
Lil Nas X Was Ready To Go Even Bigger For The 2021 MTV VMAs
Jed Skrzypczak: Until that moment, the BET Awards and the VMAs, I think he felt like he had to keep proving to people who he is. With this performance, we had this idea to recreate the iconic music video because it was already so big.
Nas really wanted to have the marching band, you know, open big. It’s slightly a homage to Spongebob because he’s obsessed with SpongeBob. We managed to get the band. And then the whole thing goes: How we can translate to the music video and make it cool, from the video music aspect to aspects of the stage.
Sean Bankhead: When we shot the music video, everyone was busting their ass. No matter what the floor, dancing barefoot with water [while] doing choreography is tricky. And Nas was so nervous. He was like, "I do not want to fall. I don't know if I'm gonna fall on a live VMA performance." We had to keep, throughout rehearsals, testing different floors, testing with water.
There were a lot of limitations with the stage, the screen going up and revealing the stage behind — that was a special build that we had to get from MTV. Then, we found out that once we got in the wet shower, we couldn't come back to the mainstage. So we had to finish the performance in the shower. I got in trouble because we weren't supposed to have the orgy at the end. And it was a decision that I told the dancers to do 20 minutes before they went live.
This video of Lil Nas X’s past self congratulating his future self for pushing through tough times while making Montero (CMBYN) is actual manifestation. #CMBYNDAY
— ᴍᴀᴊᴏʀ (@lilnasxmajor) March 26, 2022
The MONTERO Era Shows That Lil Nas X Is Just Getting Started
Christian Breslauer: If you look at the '80s, or even '90s or '70s, some of the most talented musicians were gay and they weren't able to be these icons until after the fact. All these guys who kind of stayed closeted, or they ended up coming out after the fact, but they were shunned for it to a degree. But Nas has kind of created this new narrative. I've seen him grow just as an artist and now he's moved and this last album was definitely his true coming out [saying]: "This is who I want to be as an artist."
Adrian Per: There isn't a single person for artists who's doing it at that level, with that many eyes looking at them. Whether it makes people hate him or disagree with him, or they like it, he knows how to create a tension around something that he's about to drop. It's so calculated in his brain so far ahead of time, before anything drops. I just don't know anybody else who's doing that to that level.
Sean Bankhead: I'm gonna stay hard on him. I see the potential, I see the future, but I also see what he represents. And if I was growing up, and I had a representational figure like him on TV being great — and not just because he's gay, but actually puts in work and does phenomenal music videos, and makes incredible music. He's still young, and he still has a long way to go. So I want to make sure that I stay on him to keep growing and to stay focused, and to push harder, and keep being free. Because people are watching. People are rooting for him. No matter what the headlines may say.