(OPINION) Rapper Montero Lamar Hill, also known as Lil Nas X, stoked backlash on social media this week after tweeting an image of himself being lifted on a cross to promote his new song “J Christ.”
“MY NEW SINGLE IS DEDICATED TO THE MAN WHO HAD THE GREATEST COMEBACK OF ALL TIME! J CHRIST JANUARY 12, 2024 00:00 EST BE THERE!” Lil Nas X wrote Monday on X.
The tweet also featured a video of his cross reassembling to resemble an armored suit from “The Transformers.” Hill’s tweet was met with backlash from some on social media, including other rappers, who accused him of being demonic, blasphemous and selling his soul to the devil.
“This is demonic,” Christian rapper Bryson Gray tweeted. Some expressed weariness with what they consider Hill’s mockery of Christianity, which has gone on for years and included showing up to the 2021 BET Awards in a dress that likened the Catholic Church to Nazism.
Hill released a TikTok video Tuesday where he is dressed as Jesus in a church while guzzling the wine and dumping the wafers of the Eucharist down his throat. His video was similarly met with pushback from many on X, who pointed out that Christianity has seemingly become an easy target for cultural derision.
One of Hill’s critics includes Christian rapper Kory Yeshua, who released a TikTok video saying that Hill was “mocking Jesus and Christians” and that the content he disseminates is part of a spiritual war for people’s minds.
“People will defend this because they worship these celebrities,” Yeshua said. “They have made idols out of these celebrities. People need to realize there is a spiritual war happening between the light and the dark, between good and evil.”
Yeshua contends that despite Hill’s recent claim that he is entering his “Christian era,” he began to manifest overtly satanic content and behavior after his 2018 single “Old Town Road” became a hit and he claimed children as his core audience.
Hill hit back against accusations that his promo material is blasphemous, tweeting “the crazy thing is nowhere in the picture is a mockery of jesus.”
“Jesus’s image is used throughout history in people’s art all over the world. I’m not making fun of s—. yall just gotta stop trying to gatekeep a religion that was here before any of us were even born. Stfu,” he added.
Hill is no stranger to accusations of blasphemy, sacrilege and dabbling in the demonic. In 2021, he released 666 numbered pairs of limited edition Nike Air Max 97s that were dubbed “Satan Shoes.”
