Montero Lamar Hill, known by his stage name Lil Nas X, is an American rapper and singer. He is most well known for his country rap single "Old Town Road''which went viral in early 2019 before reaching international success and becoming diamond certified by November that year. The song spent 19 weeks on top of the US Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the longest-running number-one song since 1958. Lil Nas X came out as gay while the song was atop the Hot 100 and is the only artist to do so while claiming the number 1 spot.
Source - Instagram
Following this success, Nas released several other hit singles, some of which are "Panini", "Rodeo - Cardi B & Nas”, "Industry Baby ft. Jack Harlow”, "That's What I Want", among many more. He has had two successful records as well with his debut EP titled “7”, and his debut studio album “Montero” in 2021. Nas X was the most-nominated male artist at the 62nd Annual Grammy Awards, where he won awards for Best Music Video and Best Pop Duo/Group Performance. "Old Town Road" won him two MTV Video Music Awards including Song of the Year and the American Music Award for Favorite Rap/Hip Hop Song. “Time” magazine named him as one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet in 2019, and he was named on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2020. He is also the first openly gay black artist to win a Country Music Association award.
| Name | Montero Lamar Hill |
| Date Of Birth (Age) | April 9, 1999, 23 years old |
| Net Worth | <$7- $14 million |
| Followers | Instagram - 28 million TikTok - 12 million YouTube - 18 million Twitter - 7.7 million |
| Spouse/Partner | Unknown |
| Nationality | American |
Between 2015–2017, Nas revealed that he began to stay away from "outside-of-class activities" in his teens. He began spending a lot of time building a following as an influencer to promote his work, but his creativity was uncertain. In a Rolling Stone interview he mentions doing Facebook comedy videos, then moving over to Instagram, and then to Twitter, which he mastered eventually. He identified Twitter as “the first place where I could go viral."He also shared short-format comedy videos on Facebook and Vine.
He created and ran Nicki Minaj fan accounts on Twitter, including one called "NasMaraj", according to New York Magazine.In 2017, the account gained traction for its flash fiction-style interactive "scenario threads" popularized on Twitter using dashboard app TweetDeck.NasMaraj was linked to the practice of "Tweetdecking", or using multiple accounts to artificially make specified tweets go viral. The “NasMaraj” account was suspended by Twitter due to "violating spam policies".
In 2018, Nas shifted his focus to music, and started writing and recording songs. He took up the name Lil Nas X, as a tribute to the rapper Nas.On July 24, 2018, Lil Nas released his first mixtape Nasarati on SoundCloud. Nasarati was removed from streaming services after the release of Old Town Road due to a copyright conflict. In late October 2018, he happened to hear the beat that would become "Old Town Road".
Source - Instagram
On December 3, 2018, Lil Nas X released the song "Old Town Road''.He purchased the beat on an online store from Dutch producer YoungKio for $30 and it takes samples from Nine Inch Nails' track "34 Ghosts IV" from their 6th studio album Ghosts I–IV (2008).He recorded in a small Atlanta studio, CinCoYo for $20 (They had a deal every Tuesday, called $20 Tuesdays), recording it in less than an hour.Nas began making memes to promote "Old Town Road'' before it was picked up by TikTok users.Lil Nas X estimated he made about 100 memes to promote it.The song went viral in early 2019 with the #Yeehaw Challenge meme on TikTok. Millions of users posted videos of themselves dressed as a wrangler or cowgirl, with most #yeehaw videos using the song for their soundtrack.
The song debuted at number 83 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, later going up to number one.The track also debuted on the Hot Country Songs chart at number 19 and Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs at number 36. Lil Nas X signed with Columbia Records in March 2019. In May 2019, the issues of racism in country music culture emerged again when Wrangler announced its Lil Nas X collection, with many threatening to boycott the brand. Media outlets also noted that “the song brings attention to the historic cultural erasure of African-Americans from both country music and the American frontier era.”
Country music legend Billy Ray Cyrus supported "Old Town Road", and became the featured vocalist in an April 2019 remix, the first of many. Lil Nas X broke Drake's record for the most U.S. streams from one song in one week with 143 million streams for the week ending with April 11. In May 2019, the video was released and currently has over 640 million views.
"Panini" was released as Nas's second single through Columbia Records on June 20, 2019. In mid-September 2019 "Panini" got its first remix released with rapper DaBaby. Lil Nas X released his debut extended play, titled 7, on June 21, 2019.The EP debuted at number two on the Billboard 200 chart. On June 23, 2019, Lil Nas X performed with Cyrus at the 2019 BET Awards. On June 30, Lil Nas X made his international debut at the U.K.'s annual Glastonbury Festival, when he and Billy Ray Cyrus made a surprise appearance and joined Miley Cyrus for the song, before performing "Panini". Rolling Stone premiered the Rolling Stone Top 100 in early July with three Lil Nas X songs: "Rodeo" at nine; "Panini" at four; and "Old Town Road" as the first-ever number-one song on the chart.
On July 10, he teased the release of a new song titled "Call Me by Your Name" online. On November 8, 2020, he announced a new single, "Holiday", which was released on November 13. The single debuted at 37 on the Billboard Hot 100, while the song's music video garnered millions of views within the first few weeks. In January 2021, he released a children's book, C Is for Country. He previewed "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" in a Super Bowl LV commercial, in the following month. The song was officially released on March 26, 2021, along with a music video. On the same day, Lil Nas X revealed that his debut album “Montero”, would be released in mid-2021. "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)", debuted at number one on the Billboard Hot 100, becoming Lil Nas X's second chart-topping single and third top-ten single.
On March 29, 2021, Nas collaborated with New York-based art collective MSCHF to release a special pair of Nike Air Max 97s called Satan Shoes, as seen in the "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" video. Only 666 pairs were made at a price of $1,018. Nike said they were uninvolved in the creation and promotion of the shoes and did not endorse the messages of Nas or MSCHF.He went on to release a prelude video for the song "Industry Baby".Nas released the single "Sun Goes Down" on May 21, 2021. He performed the song alongside "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)" at Saturday Night Live a day later. "Industry Baby" was released on July 23, featuring rapper Jack Harlow with production by Kanye West and Take a Daytrip. The song debuted at number two on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number one on the chart during the last week of October, 2021, becoming Lil Nas X's fourth top-ten single and third number one.
Source - Instagram
On September 17, 2021, Montero was released, along with its fourth single, "That's What I Want". On October 23, 2021, Lil Nas X made a surprise appearance at Diplo's set at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas. During the appearance he performed "Industry Baby", "Montero (Call Me by Your Name)", and "Old Town Road".
On March 16, 2022, Nas teased two songs from his "almost finished" new album, "Late to the Party" featuring YoungBoy Never Broke Again, and "Down Souf Hoes" featuring Saucy Santana. A preview of the track "Lean on My Body" was posted as well.On April 26, 2022, he announced his first concert tour, “the Long Live Montero Tour”. The tour will be in support of Montero, and will be from September to November 2022.
Lil Nas’s net worth is courted to be an estimated $7 to $14 million, according to multiple sources like Celebrity Net Worth and Forbes. Most of Nas’s earnings primarily come from his music, social media, brand endorsements, and merchandise.
Lil Nas has made a huge fortune just from his music career. In 2019, Forbes reported that Lil Nas made an estimated $14 million, pretax, owing to Old Town Road’s 19-week stay at the Billboard's Hot 100 making it the longest in history. Old Town Road on its own has sold over 18.4 million copies in terms of sales and streams. Apart from album sales, Lil Nas earns from touring and selling merchandise. There was a bidding war between Amuse and Columbia Records when it came to signing Lil Nas, and it is reported that Lil Nas turned down the $1 million offer from Amuse. This implies Columbia had to make an offer higher than $1 million dollars which would've definitely helped Lil Nas earn even more. Net Worth Spot estimates Lil Nas X earns an estimated $6.2 million a year from his YouTube channel. He earns in the hundreds of thousands from royalties as well as streams from streaming services like Spotify, Apple, and Amazon Music. Apart from album sales, Lil Nas overtook DaBaby as Spotify’s Most-Streamed Male Rapper and currently has 47 million monthly listeners on the app.
Source - Instagram
On TikTok, Nas could potentially earn upwards of an estimated $27k per post, excluding brand-sponsored deals. On Instagram, he could potentially earn upwards of an estimated $40k for a brand-sponsored post. On YouTube, his average earnings are around the $340K mark per video, excluding brand-sponsored deals.
Lil Nas X has collaborated with several major brands like Durex, Wrangler, Logitech, Panera, MSCHF, Taco Bell, and UberEats for their product placement. The exact figures of how much he has earned from these collaborations are currently unknown. In November 2020, Lil Nas X performed virtual concerts in the popular video game, Roblox, with 33 million visitors who watched the shows. The merchandise sales for Nas earned him close to the eight-figure mark as stated by Jon Vlassopulos, Roblox’s global head of music. Lil Nas also modeled in Rihanna’s Fenty Beauty trailer for which would've earned him a hefty amount as well. Continuing to capitalize on the groundbreaking popularity of “Old Town Road,” Lil Nas X has released a children’s book titled C Is for Country.
Nas’s dominance on social media is very evident with over 28 million TikTok followers. On Instagram he has over 12 million followers, and on YouTube, he has over 18 million subscribers. His Twitter account has 7.7 million followers as well.
Montero Lamar Hill was born in Lithia Springs, Georgia, on April 9, 1999. He was named after the Mitsubishi Montero. When he was six, his parents filed for divorce, and he settled in the Bankhead Courts housing project with his mother and grandmother. 3 years later he moved in with his father, who is a gospel singer,north of the city in Austell, Georgia. He regarded it as an important decision and he started "using the Internet to a great deal, when memes started to become their own form of entertainment", when he was 13.
He spent much of his teenage years alone, and turned to the Internet, "particularly Twitter, creating memes that showed his disarming wit and pop-culture savvy." His teenage years also saw him struggling with himself being gay, but at the age of around 16 or 17, he came to accept it. He began playing the trumpet in the fourth grade but quit for the fear of “looking uncool.”He graduated in 2017 from Lithia Springs High School. He then went to the University of West Georgia and majored in computer science, but dropped out in a year to pursue music. At this time, he lived with his sister and supported himself with jobs at Zaxby's restaurants and the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park. In September 2019 he revisited his high school to perform a surprise concert.
In early June 2019, Lil Nas X came out to his sister and father as he felt "the universe was signaling him to do so", despite his uncertainty about his fans' reactions. On June 30, 2019, the last day of Pride Month, Lil Nas X came out publicly as gay, tweeting: "some of y'all already know, some of y'all don't care, some of y'all not gone [f*** with me] no more. but before this month ends I want y'all to listen closely to c7osure."The tweet confirmed earlier suspicions when he first indicated this in his track "c7osure".
Source - Instagram
On an interview with BBC Breakfast, he stated that he was gay and understands that his sexuality is not readily accepted in the country or rap music communities.
The response was mostly positive, but also garnered large amounts of homophobic comments on social media, to which he reacted. It also came from the hip hop community, identifying attention to homophobia in hip hop culture. Rapper Pastor Troy made homophobic comments on the outfit Lil Nas X wore during the Grammy Awards in January 2020, to which Lil Nas X responded: "Damn I look good in that pic on god." Lil Nas X stated in September 2021 that he was an atheist "at one point" but is now "a very spiritual person in terms of the Universe, how everything works."
His current relationship status is uncertain. There isn’t enough public information about this.
A dance video by Lil Nas X.
A comedic video by Nas.
A video with artist SZA.
A transformation video by Nas.
A video of Nas using a trending filter.
Montero Lamar Hill is known by his stage name Lil Nas X.
Lil Nas’s net worth is courted to be an estimated $7 to $14 million. Most of Nas’s earnings primarily come from his music, social media, brand endorsements, and merchandise.
Lil Nas X purchased the beat for the song ‘Old Town Road’ on an online store from Dutch producer YoungKio for $30 and it takes samples from Nine Inch Nails' track "34 Ghosts IV".He recorded the song in a small Atlanta studio, CinCoYo for $20, recording it in less than an hour.
Yes. His country rap single "Old Town Road"went viral in early 2019 before reaching international success and becoming diamond certified.
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