Lil Nas X World's Greatest

The last time Lil Nas X was making headlines, it wasn’t for his music, but for walking down Ventura Boulevard around six a.m. in the morning in nothing but white undies and white cowboy boots. And while that might just sound like a typical music video of his, when done outside of such a context, it attracted the attention of a police officer. Who was then cheekily (no pun intended) told by Lil Nas X, “Hey, don’t be late to the party tonight.” He then kept strutting down the boulevard, letting the streets be his runway that night. And, talking of Manila Luzon lyrics, there is an undeniable RuPaul quality to Lil Nas X’s “World’s Greatest!, his first single since coming out of rehab after this incident. And no, the rehab wasn’t for drugs, but rather, mental health treatment. Specifically, for what he discovered was his bipolar disorder.

To be sure, Lil Nas X’s erratic behavior on the street at that time of night channeled a more wholesome version of Britney Spears, also a sufferer of bipolar disorder, shaving her head or charging at a paparazzo’s car outside of a Jiffy Lube with a closed green umbrella in 2007. And, also somewhat similarly to Britney, it only took Lil Nas X a year after his public “embarrassment” (which actually reads as more of a serve) to reemerge with new music. Granted, “World’s Greatest!” doesn’t exactly have the “what a comeback” energy of “Womanizer” (Spears’ first post-public mental breakdown single). In fact, the energy it has is distinctly RuPaul-esque, with occasional hints of Outkast vocals.

The RuPaul song that “World’s Greatest!” most overtly seems to borrow from—even if Lil Nas X isn’t aware of it (though maybe he is if he so patently avoided calling it “Champion” despite how much more frequently that term is used than “world’s greatest”)—is none other than 2009’s “Champion.” And yes, their correlation does stem in large part from the entire “gay man is triumphant in the face of adversity” theme of Lil Nas X repeating, “I’m a champion” four times to the tune of a “Hey Ya” kind of beat (awash in the same kind of guitar sounds that also interpolate a bit of “Industry Baby” for good measure). But that’s not the only Outkast-esque part of “World’s Greatest!” either. It’s also Lil Nas X’s consistently Andre 3000-“pitched” vocals that not only speak on overcoming obstacles and picking oneself back up when they fall, but also rehashing the past in a way that tracks how far he’s come since the days when he “used to share a room with my brothers and my sisters/Five to a bed, we was in there sharing covers/Grew up in the hood with my mama and grandmother.”

So it is that Lil Nas X emphasizes that those unpleasant (to say the least) circumstances, in their way, are what made him into a champion (this being the common narrative that non-nepo baby famous people tell others once they’ve become successful and convert to pro-capitalists [see also: Saucy Santana]). Along with his mother, Tamikia Hill, who gets a Beyoncé-with-Tina-style callout in “World’s Greatest!” via the lines, “Yeah, I got this walk from Atlanta/I got this talk from mammy, yeah” (it has that “And my mama was a savage, I got this shit from Tina” ring to it).

As if to mirror the hard times he pulled himself through (including the Ventura Boulevard “incident” and everything that went with it), the Phillip Youmans-directed video (or “film” as Lil Nas X prefers to have the title card read during the opening scene) begins with “Montero” in a dance studio (since everyone is having their Madonna in the “Hung Up” video moment right now) with a choreographer overseeing his somewhat lackluster movements. Observing him for enough time to know he ought to cut the music, the choreographer than “gently” chides, “You keep doin’ the same thing. You know what the problem is, you’re just not fixin’ it. You wanna call it a day?”

But no, needless to say, Lil Nas X does not want to call it a day, ostensibly embracing—once he starts all over again—the RuPaul mantra, “They try to keep you down/But there’s no denying you’re a/Champion, greatest of ‘em all/Champion, never gonna fall/You’re a champion, still standing tall/You’re a champion, and you’ll always be a hero.” This while reflecting on the simultaneous hardships and joys of his childhood (noting of his family dynamic, “At least we had each other”). Memories that give him the strength to carry on. And when his choreographer appears to give up on him yet again by leaving the room, it’s the younger version of himself that shows up to dance alongside him and remind him of the fighter within that’s always been there, and can be drawn upon whenever he needs to “valor up.”

This while still wishing the best for others (though some might say he’s just talking as an adult to his younger self) as he sings, “I hope your dreams work out for you/I hope your green comes out the blue/I hope you learn to love again/Yeah, I hope you learn to trust the plan.” That latter phrase relating to what Drake would refer to as “God’s Plan.” Even when that plan doesn’t appear to make any sense. But Lil Nas X, in this reflective mood, seems to have gained some wisdom from plumbing the depths of his memories. Particularly the ones that center on his mother, for whom the video is a tribute as her death was announced in August, with many speculating it was related to her longstanding issues with addiction.

Although those issues had kept Lil Nas X at bay (with the rapper commenting to Variety in 2020, “I never really talk about my mom. She’s an addict so we don’t have the closest relationship”), more recently they had seemed to get closer. As Lil Nas X makes clear with the closing scene of “World’s Greatest!,” during which he plays the final message of love she left him on his phone (which is exactly why people should still leave messages—for posterity). One that assures him, among other things, “I wanna say I love you. Don’t forget that.” And it’s a message that one also has to tell themselves as much as they might need to hear it from anybody else. Otherwise, the strength to carry on doesn’t come quite so easily. Unless, of course, one is willing to recite RuPaul’s “Champion” like a new-fangled Jesus Prayer. Which Lil Nas X, based on his own iteration of it, clearly is.