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Marketing the Rainbow also plays a major role in the music industry, sometimes casually, sometimes very visibly. Lil Nas X is an example of VISIBLE.

Like Elton John, you can be very flamboyant for decades without admitting that you are a member of the rainbow family. You can just admit it but do nothing with it (like Duncan Lawrence), or you can shout it from the rooftops and use the theme in your texts, communications and videos. About the Superbowl, arguing with Nike about shoes with human blood and dancing with the devil: Lil Nas X goes Marketing the Rainbow. It’s noise squared – and that’s good for sales.

Montero Lamar Hill, that’s Lil Nas X’s real name, and he just turned 22 last month. He’s from Atlanta, Georgia, and was a successful tweeter before it all exploded musically – and commercially. Two years ago, he made the song ‘Old Town Road’ and in a remix with country legend – and ‘father of’ – Billy Ray Cyrus, his star rose to unprecedented heights. Thanks to TikTok, the song went viral. It quickly reached the top of the charts, where it held the number one spot for a record nineteen weeks. The different versions were viewed more than two billion times (!) on YouTube.

Just about during the release of that remix, the still-young rapper was coming out – even though he talks about his female baby in the song – but that didn’t seem to have any effect on his popularity at all: young and old became big fans. And all because of that one hit. Maybe they didn’t notice, because that popular video was pretty goody-two-shoes and not in any way gay. What they also might not have noticed was that the song was about adultery and drugs, but wrapped in such prosaic lyrics that the average citizen did not notice it. I will come back to that in a moment.

The song also has a Dutch flavor: the nineteen-year-old producer YoungKio from the old Dutch town of Purmerend provided the beat of ‘Old Town Road’.

The sudden fame did him no harm. Google hired him to release their new ‘Hum to Search’ feature, in which Nas does a dance and hums his hit song. He also appeared in two other Google commercials, Year in Search and The Most Searched: A Celebration of Black History Makers. He also did a thing for Nintendo, still with the same song.

Super Bowl 2020: Doritos

For the Super Bowl 2020 he was asked to make a video for Doritos. He teamed up with Hollywood veteran Sam Elliot in a fun dance-off to win a bag of Doritos Cool Ranch. The video starts with ‘good old’ Ennio Morricone, but then turns into ‘Old Town Road’ (how to milk a song!). Prior to the event, Doritos had a teaser called Bassquake, in which the cowboy rides into town. It is remarkable that Doritos does something gay almost every year at the Super Bowl: often via User Generated Content (see my article about Doritos here).

The Super Bowl has been around for more than fifty years, but it wasn’t until 2015 that we saw the first commercials with a pink edge. This was encouraged by the Supreme Court’s ruling on ‘same-sex marriage’: it is remarkable how the judiciary has influenced the advertising world in this way! In 2020, eleven brands already included an LGBT theme in their commercials: from the fabulous Jonathan van Ness for Poptarts to the groundbreaking super coach Katie Sowers for Microsoft.

By the way, our Nas likes costumes, wigs, make-up – and not just like that, but well OTT. We saw this last year in his video for ‘Rodeo’ (200 million views, 128,000 comments) and recently in his “Christmas clip” Holiday (148 million and 270,000 respectively). The latter video was also used in December as the soundtrack for an advertisement for Uber’s ‘Postmates’ (a competitor of its own sister Uber Eats).

Super Bowl 2021: Logitech

For this year’s Super Bowl, he made a commercial for Logitech: a somewhat strange combination between an old tech brand (est. 1981 in Switzerland) and the young, hip artist. The theme was ‘Defy Logic’ to make it sound a bit rebellious, but how hip can you make a mouse or a webcam? Well, there were some artistic images of a model and some young people appeared to be sustainable.

Well, there were some artistic images of a model and some young people were found to be sustainable.

The partnership was somewhat broader and was also extended to the Grammys. In addition, Nas was presented as “one of the founding members of Castle, a new members-only creators’ club from Logitech designed to celebrate creators, champion culture and build community’. And thus you can make an old-fashioned brand hip again. What is interesting is that we heard part of his new song for the first time here.

That song had also been sneak-previewed on Twitter and it was used and memed a few times on TikTok. The tension was building …

Devilish

And then all the stops were pulled out: in March the rapper presented ‘MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name)’. The first part of the title is his birth name, the second a reference to the 2017 Oscar-winning film about the romance between an older American and an Italian boy. Billboard described the song as a ‘flamenco-like track with a subtle trap beat’. Variety’s Adam B. Vary wrote, “The video changed everything for queer music artists”. Esquire called it “Beelzepop”.

Lil Nas X makes no bones about it anymore: he is gay, and it doesn’t get much gayer than this video. Incidentally, there are several official variations, which together were viewed more than 150 million times within a week. In the intro, Nas says in the voice-over that he no longer “has to hide in shame”. He does his coming-out all over again. He published an open letter to himself at the age of fourteen, in which he looks at his choice to have his coming out at a young age. He concludes, “it opens doors for many other queers” and expresses his desire to let people be who they are.

In the video and on Instagram, he plays Adam as well as God / Cupid in Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam. Adam then does mischievous things to the serpent from Paradise. We also see, very erudite, a Greek text from Plato’s Symposium, which leans on the duality of good-bad, masculine-feminine. Nas is then stoned Marie-Antoinette style in the Colosseum: historically not very correct, but original – and colorful. Finally he descends pole dancing – in Calvin Klein underwear – into Dante’s Inferno to the devil where another, er, lap dance takes place – which does not end very favorably for the devil.

Despite that symbolic ending, the christian world was, of course, on its hind legs. Amusing was the hysterical Reverend Greg Locke, who probably was on speed when he condemned the entire Nas circus to hell. Governor Kristi Noem of South Dakota also contributed, but the singer replied with: go do your work, there are more important things.

Nikes with human blood

To bolster the campaign, a line of 666 exclusive numbered pairs of Nike Air were put up for sale for $ 1,018 a pair. They sold out in no time, of course, and are already listed on eBay for $ 8,000. The shoes, which contain ’66cc of red ink and a drop of human blood’, were created by the artist collective MSCHF Product Studio. They are adorned with a pentagram and a biblical quote, Luke 10:18 (hence the $ 1,018 price), which tells of the fall of Satan.

The world was too small: Satan At Your Home, and at your feet no less. It did result in an enormous, extra commotion and the social media went on and through the red. Nas apologized, but not really – to keep the discussion going. He announced that he would also release Jesus shoes, with the logo of Chick-fil-a (the well-known anti-gay company) and the motto John 3:16 (“For God so loved the world … “). And lo and behold, 305,000 likes on Twitter. Jesus shoes had already been released by MSCHF a year ago, with ‘holy water’ from the Jordan river in it. Those shoes were worn by rapper Drake, among others. What is it about rappers?

Here’s one more. Fellow rapper Joyner Lucas had problems with all that Satanism, and he tweeted, “I think the biggest problem for me is the fact he don’t understand ‘old town road’ is every kid’s anthem. Children love him for that record. They tuned in and subscribed to his channels. So with no disclaimer, he just dropped some left-field ish & all our kids see it. Smh. ”To which Lil Nas responded delicately: “I literally sing about drugs and adultery in that song. So if you let your children listen to that, it is your responsibility.” Duly noted.

Voices were heard to boycott Nike (because a boycott always works so well), so Nike couldn’t stay behind and denied left, right and middle that they had anything to do with the shoes and also filed a lawsuit – against MSCHF, not against Nas. Because it was (unauthorized) art, and entirely MSCHF’s responsibility. You didn’t hear Nike about those Jesus shoes of 2019. In a statement MSCHF states, “Satan is as much part of the art historical canon as Jesus”. The result of the lawsuit was that shipping of the shoes was no longer allowed. Practically it only meant that Nas could no longer send the 666th pair he had saved to give away.

Finally, there was a crossover to the world of games, the World of Warcraft (WoW). For his birthday last month, Nas suggested that everyone take to the streets at 3am EST to twerk to MONTERO. A response from a fan was: “Sorry, but then I have to do a raid in WoW”. To which the masters of WoW said “Surely your raid leader would understand if you were a little late.” Nas reported this on Twitter himself, and it came full circle again. CNN was counting on an assquake …

Conclusion

You can be a member of the LGBT community without using that theme in your presentation and your PR, but if your name is Lil Nas X you can go all out without harming your brand. On the contrary. And here you can also see the effect of the millennials, the most tolerant generation to date. So entertainment and Marketing the Rainbow go well together. We will have to wait and see how long Lil Nas X can keep this up, because he doesn’t seem to be able to surpass himself anymore. But he is also already 22.