At this point, Lil Nas X isn’t doing a rollout for his Montero album — he’s gifting the world performance art. In his latest fourth wall-breaking viral moment, the man once pregnant with his own album is set to appear on Maury to fight over love next week.
In a clip of the upcoming episode shared on the Maury show’s official Twitter account, Lil Nas X appears as his Montero alter-ego to reveal he’s been dating a man named Jai for a month and a half — to a woman who claims to be the mother of Jai’s four-year-old child Noah. The short preview promises the episode will be full of all of the show's typical tropes. There’s a surprise marriage proposal, a distraught mother slapping the camera frustratedly, Maury’s iconic paternity reveal, and Lil Nas X running off the stage with the camera hurriedly following him in a way every person 30 and older remembers seeing in so many Maury episodes.
The 22-year-old trendsetter hasn’t posted anything on social media about the upcoming appearance on the show, but he surely knows the internet will be set ablaze when the episode appears on MauryShow.com on Wednesday. While many may see this as either graceless clout chasing or brilliant entertainment, it’s all part of Lil Nas X’s plan to make sure the album he worked tirelessly on doesn’t get lost in the shuffle. When he hinted in October 2020 of Montero not being released until 2021, two years after he blessed his fans with his debut 7 EP, fans were understandably upset. To Lil Nas X, the delay was necessary.
“Sorry guys, I honestly wanted to just drop the album, but then it’s like drop album, [two] singles off it, then album era over? For something, I've been working on for 2 years. it’s almost not fair to myself,” he wrote on Twitter.
Montero was released on September 17. The six months prior included chart-topping singles, prison shower choreography, a bold makeout session with his male backup dancer at the BET Awards, and a faux pregnancy which resulted in the birth of his album. Since the release of the album, he’s won Wall Street Journal’s Innovator Award, became the artist for TikTok’s first NFTs, repeatedly put Boosie Badass’s panties in a bunch (and hung him from them like a digital wedgie), and now plans to take his paternity to Maury levels. It may look random, but going viral an art form — and Lil Nas X is crafting masterpieces.
With him fitting a ‘90s television staple into the Montero world he’s created, it got us thinking about how else he could repurpose pop culture to fit his eccentrically entertaining vision. His “Industry Baby” music video already made backup dancers out of muscular inmates, so why not take it a step further and do a special episode of Beyond Scared Straight with Lil Nas X being unapologetically gay while aggressive inmates try to scare him straight? He already gave Satan a lap dance in his “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)” music video, so why not guest appear on the upcoming season of P. Valley as a stripper named Montero trying to stand out from the other dancers by twerking in a devil costume?
As wild as these ideas are, they’re likely tame in the mind of a once-in-a-generation artist shocking the world to its senses.
