Long live Montero! Over the weekend, as fans waited to enter the MGM Music Hall ahead of Lil Nas X’s tour stop, a group of religious protesters gathered across the street, asking his stans to “repent and believe” with massive signs.
In true Lil Nas X fashion, he took that seemingly negative moment and turned it into a silly, positive one, tweeting, “Just told my team to send them pizza, this is really good promo!”
Lil Nas X updated his fans with a video of his team going over to hand the protesters pizza as one of the protesters held up a microphone and said, “We thank you and we appreciate but no thank you.” The video then zoomed in on another protester who was wearing a shirt that read “Christ’s forgiveness ministries as Sufjan Stevens’ “Mystery of Love” played.
“Update: they didn’t want the pizza but i accidentally fell in love with one of the homophobic protestors,” joked Lil Nas X.
Replying to fans, Lil Nas X wrote, “I miss him already.” While another, entranced by one of the protester’s looks, commented, “Suddenly I agree with them.” Lil Nas X replied, “Yeah they kinda have a point.”
Similar to Lil Nas X’s clapback by offering the group pizza, back in 2019 pop star Kim Petras posed for photos in front of a group of Westboro Baptist Church picketers upset with having the trans musician perform in the city. (The group had shared a statement ahead of time announcing that they’d be there.)
“This is my official statement on wbc picketing my show in Kansas City tomorrow. this is the energy i’m bringing n it should be yours too,” she captioned a video featuring a fake news chyron that read “Hoes mad” the night before her performance.
She then posted the photos of herself in front of the hateful group, and wrote, “update. hoes still mad.”
Lil Nas X has long been accepting of his sexual orientation, making jokes and memes surrounding being gay. But it wasn’t always that way. During an interview with CBS Mornings in 2019, he shared that from a young age he would be “praying that it was, like, a phase… That it would go away.”
“I think it’s gonna always help, you know. We still have a long way to go, because it’s not like everybody is messing with me now… But I do believe it’s helping,” he said at the time.
He also recently spoke to Rolling Stone about being one of the few openly gay men in hip-hop and what it’s been like to represent queer people in the music industry.
“It has its ups and downs. But ultimately, I feel like it’s made me stronger. It’s helped me a lot. It’s put me in a lot of nice places, in a lot of great places,” he said. “It’s been a real, steep, steep hill of like, just trying to gain that confidence to keep pushing and do a lot of the things that I do sometimes. We always make it to that next round.”