Lil Nas X was born Montero Lamar Hill, an American rapper, singer, and songwriter. His country rap single title “Old Town Road” raised him to fame as the single was viral all over TikTok and eventually brought him first viral popularity at the beginning of 2019 before getting diamond certified by November of the same year.
What Is the Net Worth of Lil Nas X?
Hill has an estimated net worth of $7 million according to Celebrity Net Worth.
Early Life
Hill was born on April 9, 1999, in Lithia Springs, Georgia, which is a small city located outside Atlanta. When he was at the age of 6, his parents parted ways and he used to stay with his mother and grandmother.
After 3 years, he started staying with his father and moved to the north of the city in Austell, Georgia. Initially, he didn’t want to leave but then considered it as a significant decision. He said, “There’s so much shit going on in Atlanta—if I would have stayed there, I would have fallen in with the wrong crowd.”
At the age of 13, he started involved immensely on the Internet during the time when memes began to be their own medium of entertainment. For most of his teenage years, he spent using the Internet and especially Twitter and used to make memes.
He also struggled during his young teen years as he learned about himself as gay and wished it was just a phase of life that will pass. Nearly at the age of 16 or 17, he finally accepted his sexuality.
When he was in the 4th grade, he started to play trumpet and became the first chair by his junior high years though he gave up playing it due to his fear of seeming not cool.
He went to Lithia Springs High School and completed his graduation in 2017. Later he attended the University of West Georgia where he took a major in computer science though he decided to drop his studies later as he wanted to have a career in music.
At that time, he was staying at his sister’s place and used to work at Zaxby’s restaurants and the Six Flags Over Georgia theme park to support himself. He revisited his school in September 2019 to perform a surprise concert.
Personal Life
Lil Nas X came out to his sister and father in early June 2019 as he realized he should confess this to them and the right thing to do in spite of being skeptical if his fans would support him.
On the last day of Pride Month, June 30, 2019, he confessed in public about his sexuality with the tweet captioning “some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone [fuck with me] no more. but before this month ends I want y’all to listen closely to c7osure. 🌈🤩✨“
some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone fwm no more. but before this month ends i want y’all to listen closely to c7osure. 🌈🤩✨ pic.twitter.com/O9krBLllqQ
— MONTERO (@LilNasX) June 30, 2019
During an interview, he was very clear-cut and he noted that he was gay and also knows that this isn’t going to be readily accepted in the nation or rap music communities.
The news gathered a lot of positive responses along with of course some homophobic backlash on social media and the rapper also responded to such backlash.
In fact, hip hop community was also involved in backlashing and Pastor Troy, a rapper, made homophobic remarks in January 2020 on Lil Nas X’s attire that he put on at the Grammy Awards and latter also responded to the former’s comments with grace saying “Damn I look good in that pic on god.”
In September last year, he also confessed to being an atheist at one point but now he turned into “a very spiritual person in terms of the Universe, how everything works.”
Career
Lil Nas X spent most of his teenage years in expectations of having a huge following as an internet personality in order to promote his work but he wasn’t sure on what to aim at in a creative manner.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, he said “I was doing Facebook comedy videos, then I moved over to Instagram, and then I hopped on Twitter … where I really was a master. That was the first place where I could go viral.”
In 2018, he sailed up to music and began to write and record songs. As a tribute to the rapper Nas, he adopted the name of Lil Nas X. He rolled out his first mixtape titled Nasarati on July 24, 2018, on SoundCloud but it didn’t perform well at all.
Soon following the launch of Old Town Road, Nasarati would be withdrawn from streaming services as a result of copyright issues.
Hill launched his single “Old Town Road” on December 3, 2018, and he started to create memes for promoting his song prior to when it was picked up by short-form video social media TikTok users.
He made around 100 memes in order to promote it and in early 2019 the song was viral as a result of the #Yeehaw challenge meme on TikTok. The other main audience includes kids that are connected to social media but concealed in the figures of adult listeners.
The song ranked 83 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and later peaked at number one. The single also ranked number 19 on the Hot Country Songs and number 36 on the Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs.
In March 2019, Hill signed with Columbia Records following an intense bidding war. In the same month, the song was controversially removed by Billboard from the Hot Country Songs chart and told Rolling Stone “When determining genres, a few factors are examined, but first and foremost is a musical composition.
While “Old Town Road” incorporates references to country and cowboy imagery, it does not embrace enough elements of today’s country music to chart in its current version.”
In the words of American Musical Journalist Robert Christgau: “Taking ‘Old Town Road’ off the country chart strikes me as racist pure and simple because country radio remains racist regardless of the Darius Ruckers and Kane Browns it makes room for.”
Billy Ray Cyrus, Country Music Star came out in support of Old Town Road and in April 2019 Hill broke the record set by Drake for highest U.S. streams from a single song within a week with 143 million streams that surpassed In My Feelings by Drake which had 116.2 million streams in July 2018 within one week.
On June 20, 2019, Hill launched his second single titled Panini via Columbia Records and in the midst of September 2019, the first remix mixtape of the song was launched by rapper DaBaby.
At the largest greenfield festival in the world, the U.K.’s annual Glastonbury Festival, on June 30, he made his international debut when he made a surprise appearance alongside Billy Ray Cyrus and joined Miley Cyrus for the song prior to performing solo on Panini.
In early July 2019, Rolling Stone aired the Rolling Stone Top 100 that had three songs by Lil Nas X: “Rodeo” at number 9, “Panini” at 4, and “Old Town Road” at 1.
On March 26, 2021, his song “Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” was released officially and the very same day he made the announcement that his debut album would be titled Montero and would be launched in the midst of 2021.
“Montero (Call Me by Your Name)” ranked number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and became the second chart-topping single by Lil Nas X and third top-ten single.
Montero was launched with its fourth single titled “That’s What I Want” on September 17, 2021.
Awards and Recognition
Time named Lil Nas X among one of the 25 most influential people on the Internet in July 2019 for his “global impact on social media”, and “overall ability to drive news.”
He has also received many awards along with one American Music Award, 5 MTV Video Music Awards, 2 BET Hip Hop Awards, and 2 Grammy Awards.
We will keep you updated with all the latest news until then stay tuned.