From the stripper pole, short shorts and pelvic undulations to the deliberatively provocative religious imagery, Nas evoked everyone from Madonna and Janet Jackson to Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion, and in doing so proclaimed that he has every right to be just as brazen about his desires and titillating about his body. Other out music stars — Frank Ocean, Scissor Sisters, Adam Lambert, Olly Alexander, Orville Peck — have waded into the same territory, most recently Troye Sivan with his (self-proclaimed) bop about bottoming, “Bloom.” But no music star who’s achieved Nas’ chart-topping, record-setting level of success and also come out has attempted anything on the scale of what Nas is doing with “Montero.”
