Lil Nas X laughs off Christian rapper diss song
Lil Nas X’s released new single “J Christ” in January. (Getty/Emma McIntyre)
Lil Nas X is laughing off the backlash from religious social media users after revealing plans to release Christian music.
The “Old Town Road” singer announced last week that his new music will be taking a new direction after “rejoining Christianity”, but it would seem religious followers aren’t convinced.
Uproar ensued when Lil Nas X shared a snippet of a new song, seemingly called “Angels” to social media, and he captioned the video: “Y’all mind if I enter my Christian era?”
Now, a quick search through TikTok will result in a host of videos from hardcore Christians lashing out at the hitmaker for supposedly making a mockery of their religion, pointing to Lil Nas X’s 2021 single “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” – the music video for which saw him give the devil a lapdance.
When it comes to controversy, this isn’t Lil Nas X’s first rodeo (get it?), so he was well-prepped with a comeback when a Christian “rapper” posted a “diss” track about the singer.
“I made one snippet about wanting god to give me hope a few days ago and already like 5 Christian rappers have conceptualized, wrote, recorded, and shot music videos in their grandma’s basements for diss songs about me. We really back”, the Grammy winner teased.
While Lil Nas X suggests there are a couple of Christian rappers lashing out at him with self-written diss tracks, the main culprit appears to be Bryson Gray, a self-described “Christian conservative rapper”.
In his diss track, Gray refers to Lil Nas X as a “gay demon” and employs religious homophobia to allege that the singer is being used to “turn your kids into homosexuals”.
While Gray, who has openly referred to himself as homophobic, has his share of loyal followers who seem to appreciate his work, his latest diss track was flooded with criticism from Lil Nas X fans.
“GONNA LIE THIS WAS FIRE,” one comment under his attempted diss video reads.
“If you gonna be homophobic at least be good at what you’re doing,” adds a second.
As well as targetting Lil Nas X in his diss song, Gray also calls out rapper Kid Cudi for sometimes opting to wear a dress during live performances.
The “Pursuit of Happiness” rapper was just as amused by the diss track as Lil Nas X, though, and took to X (formerly Twitter) to poke fun at it.
“Catchin strays,” he wrote, accompanied by a crying laughing emoji. “God aint have nothing to do w this.”
Another artist, Tyson James, who describes himself as a “Christian conservative hip hop artist” and the “most banned rapper to ever live”, also proudly posted a Lil Nas diss track, in which he raps: “I’ma fight these homos” and “God don’t play that homo mess.”
Replying to James’s attempted diss track, Lil Nas X fired back: “No way u at the big age of 57 years old went into the studio wrote, produced, recorded, and shot a music video for an a** diss song to me because of a snippet i posted 9 hours ago . i really got yall on a leash.”
A majority of the backlash to Lil Nas X’s seemingly sincere turn to Christian music seems to stem from deep rooted homophobia within Christianity.
But Lil Nas X is more than able to stand his ground and has taken to social media several times over the past week to defend his return to Christianity.
“Making Christian music does not mean I can’t suck d**k no more,” he said in one tweet.
“Y’all see everything I do as a gimmick. In reality, I’m just an artist expressing myself in different ways.”
The singer has also shut down claims that the backlash has anything to do with his “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” music video.
In a post to X on Tuesday (5 December), Lil Nas fact-checked satanist-accusors, telling them: “The devil is mentioned ONE time throughout my entire last album and the line is ‘tell the devil i wont have him inside, i know everything’s gonna be alright’. y’all have spent this entire last week rewriting history over me releasing a snippet.”
Anyway… Lil Nas X has us seated for this new era and we *will* be streaming.
