Unless you're decidedly washed and generally just not a pleasant person to be around, the presence of Lil Nas X in the current zeitgeist is a welcome one. X, even when discussing something as standard as plans for his debut album, routinely offers up far-from-boring anecdotes. Not to mention his Pride Month coming out message was an inspiring source of encouragement for young fans amid the lengthy "Old Town Road" charts dominance.
And now, in a teaser clip from a new episode of HBO's The Shop, Lil Nas X is seen in a roundtable discussion with an assortment of people, most of whom have since been chastised in tweets about the very nature of the filmed discussion.
Asked why it was important or necessary to share his coming out message, a multi-person inquiry that sort of comes across as bullying and includes an impassioned Kevin Hart, who, um, almost hosted the Oscars once, X answered definitively.
"It's not that, like, it's like being forced," he said. "It's just knowing [that] growing up, I'm growing up to hate this shit."
Hart then broke in to ask "what" Nas was saying he was taught to hate as a child, to which the 20-year-old answered firmly. "Homosexuality, gay people," X said. "Come on, now. If you really from the hood, you know. For me, the cool dude with the song on the top of everything to say this any other time, I'm doing this for attention in my eyes. But if you're doing this when you're at the top, you know it's for real."
The clip, embedded above, has inspired some online debate in which Hart, specifically, is being taken to task for his previous comments on the LGBTQ community. Additionally, the overall way this discussion unfolded has been criticized:
In related news, Lil Nas X recently told Angie Martinez he's currently working on what will become his debut studio full-length. As it stands now, he's approximately 2 percent done with the songwriting part of the process.
