CHATTER AWAY: Overnight Open Thread

People Magazine reports:

Lil Nas X is looking for love in his latest music video. On Friday, the 22-year-old musician dropped a visual for his new song “That’s What I Want,” which comes off his debut studio album Montero, which was released the same day.

At the opening of the almost three-minute-long clip, fans at a football stadium watch as Lil Nas X falls from the sky and onto the field, where he is then carried by teammates to sit on a bench to recover from an injury.

As he watches his team, the rapper and another player lock eyes, before the teammate finds Lil Nas X in the locker room and proceeds to take part in a steamy makeout session with him.

The Guardian reports:

Lil Nas X’s debut album Montero arrives accompanied by not one, but two huge advertising tie-ins. In the first commercial, he shills Taco Bell’s Toasted Breakfast Burritos in a pink pompadour wig. Then there’s a series of adverts for Uber Eats, in which his comic foil is Elton John, one of Montero’s guest stars, albeit a low-key one, contributing piano.

He’s become such a familiar presence that it’s easy to forget what an extraordinary phenomenon he is. It’s not just that one of the biggest rappers in the world is an out gay man – an enlightened attitude to homosexuality has never ranked high on hip-hop’s list of virtues – but that he’s an out gay man who places his sexuality front and centre in his music.

His last single, Industry Baby, came with a video set in a prison in which Lil Nas X leads a troupe of naked men in a dance routine in the showers.

Pitchfork reports:

The promotional cycle behind this album has been a memorable one. His video for the album’s title track prompted a minor Satanic panic from conservative pundits due to its demonic lap dance (as well as his limited Satanic shoe release). Following a Saturday Night Live wardrobe malfunction, he performed the single at the BET Awards this year and prompted an audible reaction due to his closing kiss.

Watch the video all the way through. Whoa.