While the 2021 edition of the BET Awards was certainly not short on highlights, one moment has risen above the rest of us due to both sheer replayability and its creator’s continued penchant for shutting down hate-filled detractors.
We’re talking, of course, about Lil Nas X’s 2021 BET Awards performance of his recently certified double-platinum single “Montero (Call Me by Your Name).” As was the case with the track’s video, which prominently featured a depiction of the fictional character often referred to as Satan receiving a lap dance from X, the BET Awards rendition of “Montero” was all it took to again send a few preposterously out-of-touch individuals into homophobic overdrive.
The performance, available in full below via YouTube, closed out with a shot of X getting in some quick makeout action with a backup dancer. And while it’s hard to imagine anyone on the planet choosing to be bothered enough by such a thing that they go public with their idiocy, that did indeed happen.
One Twitter user’s celebratory shout-out to X for referencing Michael Jackson’s “Remember the Time” in the performance, for example, was met with a hateful complaint that X shouldn’t “use African culture for shit like this.” X responded, pointing out how often some people tend to selectively edit history to serve an exclusionary narrative.
“Y’all really like to pretend homosexuality didn’t exist in African culture,” X said.
Elsewhere, Lil Nas X shared photos from the Sunday night event featuring Tyler, the Creator. He also had some fun with his responses to one misguided Twitter user who went the predictable route of criticizing his red carpet looks using irrelevant words like “emasculated,” with X jokingly requesting the user to “please use better pictures next time.”
Going further, X—who in May followed up “Montero” with the excellent Take a Daytrip-produced single “Sun Goes Down”—also informed this same Twitter user that “we causing the emasculation of men all 2021,” marking an admirable goal for the year.
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