Lil Nas

Lil Nas

The 24-year-old rapper and singer shares a new song snippet and mini video to his social media accounts, unveiling a somber ballad that seemed to reference faith.

He appeared to have filmed the short guerrilla-style video at a largely deserted intersection in the middle of the night.

‘Do you mind if I enter my Christian era?’ he asked in his caption, although several fans and followers seemed less than convinced that he was making a turn toward explicitly religious songs after some of his previous antics.

The video started with Nas (real name: Montero Lamar Hill) sitting in the passenger seat of a white luxury SUV with the door open while it was parked in a lane at an intersection, even as another vehicle drove past it through the green light.

He was wearing a black T-shirt with the text: ‘If God doesn’t exist, who is laughing at us?’

Nas then exited the vehicle and slowly walked into the center of the intersection.

The lo-fi nature of the video made it unlikely that he had officially closed the intersection for a shoot, suggesting that he may have filmed the clip on site, despite the potential dangers of performing amid moving cars.

The rapper paired his religious-themed T-shirt with an acid-wash denim skirt that was ripped around the low-slung hem, and wore a pair of chunky black snow boots.

He completed his look with long, straight hair that reached his back and waved around as he started dancing as the pace increased.

Despite the potentially trolling nature of the clip, the Old Town Road rapper certainly used religious-looking lyrics with an apparent Christian twist.

“Father stretch my hands / The lonely road seems to last the longest,” he lip-synced, looking somber. “Help me with my plans / Everything seems to be going nowhere / Oh, free me from worry and longing for pity / Free me from all this envy inside me.”

As he moved toward the empty center of the intersection, he began jumping wildly and waving his hair before kneeling on both knees as if showing himself to a higher power.

“I don’t want these feelings / I call on angels / I try my best to face my pain, yeah / Give me hope when I’m feeling down,” he continued singing to the heavens.

At the end of the clip, Nas broke into a smile and ran back to his vehicle, as if realizing how potentially dangerous the stunt was.

It’s not clear if the video is a standalone clip, or if a longer version of the song (and a more professionally produced video) will be released in the future.

He hinted at the clip’s release on Tuesday when he tweeted: “Not gonna lie, I wanted to reinvent myself for this next era, but unfortunately I’m still gay.”

After posting his music video, Lil Nas

“bro took a stripper pole to hell and found the stairs to heaven… character development fr,” one person joked, which the rapper seemed to approve of.

“This man is such a troll but so damn talented,” someone else wrote, and Nas didn’t deny he was trolling when he reposted it.

Another person joked that he was entering his “thug” or “Truly Humble Under God” era.

He later added a tweet seemingly defending a departure from Christian music, although it may also have been a joke.

‘Making Christian music doesn’t mean I can’t suck anymore. the two are not mutually exclusive. I may take a knee for several reasons,” he wrote.

Nas went on to defend himself in a seething follow-up tweet.

‘You see everything I do as a gimmick. when in reality I’m just an artist expressing myself in different ways,” he wrote. “Whether I’m a cowboy, gay, Satanist or now Christian, you all find a problem! you guys don’t check no one else’s art is like mine. You all hate me because I’m cute and cute and small.’

Nas also reposted an account that had previously shared numerous right-wing and anti-Semitic posts complaining that he couldn’t really be a Christian because of his long hair and skirt, even though Western depictions of Jesus have shown him with long hair for centuries.

“Jesus walked around with 2 feet of hair in a loose long sleeve summer dress, honey, I promise he’s okay with me having a bus down and a skirt on,” the rapper joked in a retweet.

In his Instagram Stories, Nas seemed to reinforce his new, openly Christian path by highlighting a cross-shaped dangling earring in a video.

Another clip showed him dancing around a courtyard at night as he overlaid a spoofed tweet: “Pope Francis says all Christians should forgive rapper Lil Nas

He also attacked another doubter, who complained, “That’s not how Christianity works.”

“Look out everyone, it’s Christendom’s correctional officer,” Nas wrote in a quote tweet.

The hitmaker previously offended some conservative Christians and right-wing figures with previous songs that referenced his sexuality.

The complaints reached a fever pitch in 2021 with the release of his single Montero (Call Me By Your Name).

In the song’s music video, the rapper and singer were sometimes dressed up with dark wings and horns, which some of his critics – and defenders – described as satanic imagery.