Lil Nas X helped his bisexual brother come out

Lil Nax X helped his bisexual brother come out. That’s just one of the revelations to come out of the out rapper’s new documentary, Lil Nas X: Long Live Montero, following its much-talked about premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival this weekend.

After a brief delay due to a bomb threat reportedly targeting Lil Nas X, the film, directed by Carlos Lopez Estrada and Zac Manuel, had its world premiere on Saturday night. The documentary captures a pivotal moment in Lil Nas X’s career as he heads out on the first leg of his “Long Live Montero” tour in late 2022 amid both wild popular success and conservative backlash around the unapologetically queer and undeniably provocative imagery in his music and videos.

Related:

Lil Nas X documentary premiere delayed by bomb threat

One source said the threat targeted the rapper because he is a Black queer artist.

Estrada and Manuel also pull back the curtain on the pop star’s personal life and rise to fame leading up to his breakthrough 2018 hit “Old Town Road.”

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As Yahoo! Entertainment notes, the singer describes wanting “to be an acceptable gay person” prior to coming out in 2019, shortly after “Old Town Road” reached No. 1 on the Billboard charts. While his father initially worried that “the devil was tempting him” when he first came out, Lil Nas X says his dad now goes to gay clubs with him. His father also walked the red carpet at TIFF alongside Lil Nas X and his young nephews.

In the film, the rapper’s younger brother, Tramon Hill, also reveals that Lil Nas X paved the way for his own coming out. “My brother really opened doors for a lot of people,” he says in the film according to Entertainment Weekly. “Yeah, he opened a door for me. What I mean by that, like, I’m not gay, though, you feel me? I’m bisexual. He helped me be real with myself. My brother made me more open to it.”

Estrada and Manuel also show Lil Nas X struggling with conservative backlash. Already a target for anti-LGBTQ+ hate after coming out, he became a lightning rod for the Christian right after releasing the video for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” the lead single from his debut album, Montero. The 2021 video features Lil Nas X giving an actor dressed as Satan a lap dance.

“I went from being your friendly neighborhood cowboy to this controversial quote-unquote satanic [musician],” he says in the film. At another point in the doc, he attempts to turn the other cheek by sending pizzas to protesters at one of his shows. “I was a little evil in doing it,” he admits, according to Yahoo! Entertainment. “Because it was pineapple pizza.”

Ahead of the film’s premiere, Lil Nas X told Variety that he aims to raise the bar in terms of what Black and queer people can achieve. “I feel like we live in a generation where Black queer people really control culture, and they’re helping really take the world to the next level,” he said. “And I think that’s going to have an effect on our youth watching us.”

On Saturday night’s red carpet, the “Industry Baby” singer told reporters that he wanted fans who watched the documentary to “see the real me.”

Still, during a post-screening Q&A, he admitted he was hesitant to let Estrada and Manuel into his world. “I hate people knowing about my life because I can’t keep my funny persona. Now people know I’m all serious,” he said. “I’m glad I did it.”