After Lil Nas X called out the BET Awards for a lack of 2022 nominations despite a successful year commercially and critically, BET put out an empty statement claiming that they celebrate diversity within the Black community. Those in support of BET’s statement and (possibly) LNX’s lack of nominations pointed to the fact that he performed in 2021, so it can’t possibly be due to homophobia or anything else.
Now in a recent statement released to RollingStone, Lil Nas X explained, “they[‘ll] say that ‘no one cheered louder’ for me than them that night.” However, he also continued to reveal the hoops he had to jump to perform and what happened after that performance.
My relationship with BET has been painful and strained for quite some time. It didn’t start with this year’s nominations like most people might think. They did let me perform on their show last year, but only after I gave assurances that I was not a satanist or devil worshipper and that my performance would be appropriate for their audience.
This performance they still get to gain from. This isn’t just in AdSense but as a deflection from people who want to downplay Lil Nas X and other Black LGBTQ+ artists speaking up. LNX’s 2021 performance of Call Me By Your Name at the 2021 BET Awards is the 28th most viewed BET Networks video at seven million views. (It’s worth mentioning his Old Town Road sits at number three with 44 million views.)
Members of his team speak out about BET
A few members of LNX’s team also spoke up and corroborated his statement. According to RollingStone, they chose to stay anonymous out of fear of retribution.
The response we got back was, ‘We need to clarify a few things. Is he a Satanist? Are there going to be elements of devil worship or satan in the show?” I was so taken aback by it. We’d been fielding those questions from people for months by that point after the video and the shoes, and of course the answer was no and we obviously got the slot. But it blew our minds.
A separate member of the team referenced BET’s oversite and talked about how the meaning of the song and the symbolism went over the head of the decision-makers at BET. While layered, the biblical references were surface-level. Even PBS covered it over a month before the performance. (By the way, even if he was a Satanist, so what?)
When Nas created ‘Montero,’ he knew what he was doing. He wanted to create a queer-pop anthem. He wanted to make a statement based on what he’s heard from people probably his whole life as a gay man. That statement was very clear to me. But they’ve all missed the message so much that all they see is the devil. There was no contemplation that this was what he’s always heard and that now he’s embracing it.
There wasn’t just massive oversight before the performance, LNX said that when they got off stage, “the BET Awards team was actually very upset that I kissed my dancer onstage and vocalized their discontent with multiple members of my team immediately following the performance.”
Late To Da Party
Again, there is a clear difference in the acceptable level of queerness BET appears willing to accept. They’ll invite some non-binary artists, gay artists, and bisexual artists (always giving more grace to women) to exist in their spaces, but not award excellence from an out gay man. BET will instead invite known predators and give recently passed Black manosphere grifter on YouTube a spot during the in memoriam.
At the same time, they never celebrated any of the Black members of Pose for their acting or musical talents. The fact that Billy Porter and Michaela Jaé Rodriguez earned recognition from white-dominated spaces (the Emmys and Golden Globes respectively) while the BET awards didn’t even nominate them speaks volumes. Even RuPaul, who I take a laundry list of issues with, was never acknowledged by BET for the TV-programming empire he built.
In addition to it being a fun, angry anthem, LNX and NBA Young Boy’s newest song Late To Da Party (F*CK BET) did more than just brag about his success and not needing to be accepted by the former gatekeepers of Black entertainment (BET is not the only longstanding institution that holds this title). He said several times that “they want me to die.” While some of this is literal death from homophobes that can’t even fake the sinister attitude of “love the sinner, hate the sin,” this is more a call to them to wish they could bully him into silence or being an “acceptable gay.”
This is the same sentiment that Lil Nas X and his team spoke up about dealing with leading up to and after the 2021 performance.
(via RollingStone, image: Bennett Raglin/Getty Images for BET)
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