Lil Nas X Net Worth

Biography Lil Nas X

Lil Nas X is a new name in the global music space. The young African-American rapper, who released the country rap song “Old Town Road” in early 2019, is hailed as a revolutionary who defied cultural and social norms, managed to defeat conservative sentiments in the music industry and achieved worldwide recognition.

Childhood

The real name of the artist, who by the age of 20 was called “a powerful and unusual cultural phenomenon in America’s newest music industry,” is Montero Lamar Hill. The musician was born on April 9, 1999 in a poor African-American family from Atlanta, the main city of Georgia, and for the first six years he lived with his parents in the municipal area of ​​Lithia Springs.

His father Robert Stafford (born 1969) was not a professional musician, but among his relatives he was known as such, especially when he wrote a song especially for the funeral of a friend, which made everyone present burst into tears, and he was invited to perform at various celebrations and events. He was against his son’s passion for music, more precisely, rap culture, citing the fact that there are already too many rappers in the industry, but later changed his mind and now supports Montero in all endeavors.

The biological mother of the artist, as well as his brothers Lamarco and Tramon, is Tamikia Hill. The rapper bears her last name. After their parents divorced in 2005, Montero and his brothers stayed with their mother for several years. Her mother helped her raise the children.

Divorce seriously affected the boy. He became a problem child, and it was difficult for his mother to cope with the uncontrollable nature of a tomboy, so in 2009, 10-year-old Montero went to his father in the town of Austell, located near Atlanta. By then, his father had remarried. Montero’s stepmother, Mia Stafford, became the boy’s second mother. She put a lot of effort into Montero getting into college: she helped him with applications for grants.

During his studies at school, Hill became interested in music, attended a trumpet class and was even the head of the school orchestra, but dropped out because, according to him, he thought that he did not look as cool in the eyes of his classmates as he would like.

After graduating from high school, Montero went to college, but, according to Rolling Stone, he studied at the IT department for only one semester. Passion for the Internet, in which a teenager from a poor family found refuge from the problems of adulthood and misunderstanding of peers, as well as creating his own musical compositions, soon became the main business of his life and replaced other activities.

This caused a storm in the Montero family: the stepmother, who made so much effort to get her stepson to go to college, was furious, and the father had no hope that his son would achieve any tangible success in an industry already satiated with aspiring rap artists.

Also, Rolling Stone, the most respected music publication in the world, says that between 2015 and 2018, Hill tried to make money on social networks, in particular, he managed the Nikki Minaj fan page on Twitter, which was eventually blocked for a violation of the spam policy stipulated by American law, but the singer himself denies this information and calls it a misunderstanding.

old town road

The young musician took the stage name Lil Nas X in honor of the winner of several Grammy awards, rapper Nas, who ranks first on the list of the greatest MCs of all time according to MTV.

In December 2018, Frascher released the single “Old Town Road”. It is known that the aspiring musician bought the beat on Halloween night anonymously for a ridiculous amount of only thirty dollars, and recorded the song for twenty dollars in one of the inexpensive music studios in Atlanta, which make significant discounts at night.

Shortly after appearing on the TikTok app, the very first video clip for “Old Town Road”, which, according to the young enterprising musician, was almost entirely made up of memes, spread all over the Internet, and by mid-March 2019, the song became one of the hits Billboard Hot Country Songs, from where, however, it was removed for inconsistency with the country style.

The song really contained many signs of the style of industrial rock and rap music, however, the impudent frasher called his overthrow from the musical Olympus a manifestation of racial injustice and segregation.

They thought I was too black to be popular.

However, the removal from the chart brought undoubted benefits, because the idol of country music, the father of Miley Cyrus and the favorite of several generations of Americans, Mr. Billy Ray Cyrus himself spoke out in defense of Lil Nas X. In May 2019, he, along with Leal, sang the chorus on a new version of “Old Town Road”.

The song was re-admitted to the Billboard Hot Country Songs, topped the chart, and placed Frasher’s name among America’s most influential Internet celebrities.

The phenomenal success of the debut composition of the musician from Atlanta can be easily explained: the song is remembered from the first listening, the clip was created from memes, each of which puts a mark in the mind of the viewer, and participation in the remixes of the brightest stars provided the song with the necessary level of public interest and powerful support from the media information.

The full video production on “Old Town Road” premiered on YouTube in mid-May 2019. The clip was inspired by Donald Glover’s Atlanta series, and the song, as expected, became the biggest hit of the summer of 2019.

The clip, in which the Wild West meets modernity, amazed even sophisticated viewers. The video did not contain a single element from the cocktail that has already become traditional for rap artists: drugs, pathos, naked women, weapons and obscene language. As a result, in just six months, the video gained almost 400 million views and made Lil Nas X a world-class star.

In terms of the duration of its stay at the top position of the chart, “Old TownRoad” was able to bypass the 1995 song “One Sweet Day” by Mariah Carey, which displaced her hit Celine Dion “Because You Loved Me”, as well as the famous “Despacito” by Luis Fonsi.

Upon learning of the record set by the young rapper, Mariah Carey personally congratulated him, wishing him success, to which Lil Nas X, or simply X, as his fans call him, replied that he would try not to disappoint the star and keep the bar high.

Rapid takeoff

In an interview with Time X, he says that he feels like an innovator and is ready to fight for his identity, and also compares himself to the pioneers of hip-hop and rock and roll. After the release of the remix of “Old Town Road” featuring Billy Ray Cyrus, versions of the song with Diplo and Korean stars from the BTS collective were released, which caused numerous jokes in the media space.

Being on the crest of fame, X tried to make the most of the scandals that accompanied him from the very beginning of his musical career, and immediately after the release of the composition “Panini” declared his homosexuality, drawing attention to the hints contained in the song “C7osure” (“… Collect the past into a backpack, open up to the future / I must do this so as not to regret in old age”).

The video clip for the second creation of the young rapper starred Sky Jackson, the star of the television series Jessie. The video contained many references to the 1982 cult film Blade Runner and became very popular, but the record set by his debut song could not be broken. The triumphal procession of “Old Town Road” continued until the end of the summer of 2019 and led to several nominations of Lil Nas X for the most prestigious award in the world of music – the Grammy.

In the summer of 2019, the young artist’s EP was released, which included seven songs, including the already famous “Old Town Road” and “Panini”. The compilation received mixed reviews from critics: some called it “addictive” and praised the balance of seriousness and playfulness, others noted the project’s obvious commercial component, the songs of which absorbed the best features of country, rock and rap.

The song “Rodeo” featured singer Cardi B, and the song “F9mily” was recorded with Travis Barker. According to Rolling Stone, the collection took second place in the list of the best albums of the year. It brought the young Atlanta musician recognition from the Country Association and awards from the Teen Choice Awards and MTV.

Lil Nas X personal life

Little is known about the details of the private life of the young rap star, who lit up the musical Olympus with her radiance in 2019. The rapper, who just turned 20 in the spring of 2019, came out as gay and tweeted about it, sparking a backlash in the hip-hop community, which is known for its conservative views on sexual orientation.

Despite the fact that fans suspected their idol of homosexuality from the very beginning, there is no confirmation of this fact, except for the words of the musician himself. Lil Nas X was never seen by the paparazzi in the company of a close friend, which would confirm his belonging to sexual minorities.

Some connoisseurs of musical culture tend to think that the young rap star’s homosexuality is just a PR stunt, and a very well thought out one. Having managed to stand his ground and won the fight against racial injustice, Lil Nas X entered the battle against the homophobic tendencies that reign in the hip-hop space, and received strong support from the global LGBT community.

lil nas x now

The song “Old Town Road”, included in the debut EP of the artist, which went on sale in June 2019, marked the beginning of a new musical trend, called “country rap” by critics.

“Lil Nas X has done the impossible – he’s broken down cultural barriers and redefined musical styles,” says the Columbia Records executive who signed the young artist.

The musician went against stereotypes and gained a reputation as an artist who prefers to play by his own rules and offers a unique musical product based on his own interpretation of musical traditions. Lil Nas X and his songs exist in an unbiased space where cultural norms and boundaries, be it genre or identity, don’t really matter.

In the fall of 2019, the Atlanta rapper was named among the youngest and most influential Internet celebrities, which also included Billy Eilish and Lizzo. Lil Nas X has received six Grammy nominations, for the most prestigious awards in the world of music, he competes with the romantic rockers Black Pumas in the Best New Artist category, and in the Record of the Year category, he competes with rappers Post Malone and Khalid.

At the ceremony, the guy performed his hit “Old Tow Road” along with Korean stars BTS and received a statuette for the best duet performance. Also, the video for this song brought him an award in the nomination “Best Video”.