Rapper stirs satanic panic for pride and profit
Back in the ’80s I used to listen to a ton of heavy metal. My favorites included Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, plus some slightly more underground acts, like Venom and Mercyful Fate. They all played around with what I considered devil imagery, or what I would later come to understand as satanism. At the time I thought it was pretty funny. I didn’t believe in God, and I didn’t believe in the devil. I was an angry kid who liked listening to angry music. To me, the monsters were just a colorful bonus. But I was aware they stirred up a lot of excitement among those who claimed such music might lead me and my metal cohort to Satan.
I recall my misspent youth now because of Lil Nas X, the young rapper of “Old Town Road” fame who recently, cannily, poked the culture-war bear with the baroque video for his song “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).” Like my old heavy metal heroes, Lil Nas X has inspired much hysterical hand-wringing In the video he slides down a stripper pole to hell, gives Satan a lap dance and summarily deposes him (much as the folk antihero Stagolee did, minus the pole and the lap dance). If that’s not enough to fuel your outrage, Lil Nas also teamed up with the art collective MSCHF to create Satan Shoes, which allegedly include a drop of blood per sneaker. (To which I say: Show me the needle, and I’ll believe it).
Lil Nas knows what he’s doing. He’s schooled in the ways of satanic panic, the peculiar chorus of moral fervor, real or feigned, that arrives whenever images of Satan enter pop culture. Dana Carvey’s “Saturday Night Live” church lady asked the perennial question: “Could it be … Satan?” If the answer is yes, chances are controversy is nigh. And as any artist knows, controversy is good.
“There have long been artists and social figures who find that, if you’re willing to weather the association, the devil can be a great PR boost,” says Nicholas Laudadio, an associate professor of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he teaches a class on the history of the devil. “But for all of them, as well as for Lil Nas X in this moment, their engagement with or ‘use’ of the devil is for far more than simply marketing.”
This is where things get more interesting. As a gay Black man, Lil Nas X has fought off racism and homophobia, and warnings that he’s going to hell. His response, be it in the form of a video or sneakers, is made for such conflict. You want hell? OK, you got it. In writing about Lil Nas X’s response to conservative Twitter antagonists, the New York Times’ Joe Caramanica refers to “the effortlessness, the ease, the joy of his reactions to the reactions.” As they used to say on “The Wire,” it’s all in the game.
The satanic panic hasn’t always been so sporting. In the 1980s McMartin preschool trial, the operators of a California preschool were accused of satanic ritual abuse. In a scenario right out of “The Crucible,” the McMartin family was hauled into court and charged with all manner of devilish evil and ritual torture. One of the children identified Chuck Norris as one of the abusers. After seven years and $15 million spent, the case resulted in no convictions.
Compared to that legal persecution, it’s pretty easy to be cynical about l’affaire de Lil Nas X. There’s something transactional about it: I give you the devil. You give me canned indignation. Mix. Stir. Repeat. The artist raises his profile, moves units and trolls the hand-wringers The hand-wringers fire up their base with practiced outrage. On the other hand, Lil Nas X is also a historic figure, an out gay Black man in hip-hop. His stakes are high in dancing with the devil, as his attackers seek to use the devilish imagery to knock down all that he represents. As Craig Jenkins writes in Vulture, “Lil Nas checks several boxes as a gay pop star who’s prideful and present, perpetually online and daring you to come for him.”
In choosing the devil as an ally, Lil Nas X has, indeed, dared you to come for him. His courage in doing so, in pressing the buttons of culture war and baiting his foes, goes beyond pure posturing and embraces genuine defiance. You can be both appreciative of his stance and skeptical of his intentions.