Lil Nas X‘s life has done a complete 180 in the past year.
He went from being an undiscovered talent to having the longest running number one single in Billboard Hot 100 history in a very short period of time. That’s saying a lot coming from a guy who initially set out to study computer science at college not too long ago.
Lil Nas (real name Montero Lamar Hill) talks about life and his “pretty sick” career up to this point in a new interview with PAPER Magazine, where he landed their coveted digital cover.
The Georgia native is seen riding on a Unicorn floatie in a pool while wearing a colorfully unbuttoned shirt, white slacks and no shoes.
He talks about a variety of topics in his interview with PAPER, notably the viral fame he had before his global smash “Old Town Road” came into play and how he handles his ever growing social media existence.
“I do try to stay positive online,” he shared. “I’ll ask myself, ‘Is this going to offend somebody?,’ before I do it. A lot of the stuff I used to do years before would sometimes go too far. I know I have a platform now, so there’s more of a need to make sure nothing is hurtful or too crazy. Even dealing with mean people, I can do it because I understand them. I used to sometimes say mean sh** for no reason. I know that when people say things they’re just thoughts that might be there today but I’m not going to care about tomorrow. What am I even gaining from acknowledging it?”
Lil Nas, 20, made headlines when he came out on Sunday, June 30, which happened to be the last day of Pride month. He planned on doing it a bit earlier for reasons that came to him as signs.
“I really believe in signs and I started to see seven and nine a lot right around the time I was about to come out,” he said. “I was originally going to do it at Pride because I saw a banner that said, ‘LA Pride, June 7 -9,’ and I was like, ‘Wow, there goes the numbers again.’ And then my sister ended up having her baby on the ninth, so nine became my number for family.”
Check out the full interview with Lil Nas here.