Lil Nas X talks feeling disconnected from Atlanta’s Hip Hop scene, his “HOTBOX” era and finding validation in new interview

Lil Nas X has lived several lives since he took us down the “Old Town Road” in 2018. Now 25 years old, the artist who hails from Atlanta’s Bankhead neighborhood is taking fans on another journey, only this time he is equipped to be a more authentic version of himself.

He dropped off his newest single “HOTBOX” on Friday (March 14) following a week of releases that included the songs “DREAMBOY,” “BIG DUMMY!” “SWISH” and “Right There,” all of which are drumming up excitement for the forthcoming album DREAMBOY due out sometime in the future. In a new interview with Atlanta radio station Hot 107.9, the genre-defying creative spoke about carving out a lane of his own.

Lil Nas X has always been an out-of-the-box type of artist

For starters, Lil Nas X got real about feeling out of place compared to his contemporaries who found success with trap music. “I felt disconnected from it all … It’s Thug, it’s like Future … I just felt like, d**n … I can’t see myself belonging here,” so he branched out. “When I broke out, the song [‘Old Town Road’ was] completely, like, different. It’s no Atlanta-type s**t at all,” he said of the viral hit that garnered him a co-sign from country music icon Billy Ray Cyrus. The Columbia Records signee continued, “Once I like spent some time away from the industry a little bit, kinda to myself, I kinda came back to my roots. I’m an Atlanta n**ga, what am I doing? I can do this. I can, like, hop in my ATL bag.”

Learning to quiet the noise of everyone’s expectations has been integral to Nas X’s artistic evolution

“I feel like at the top of 2024 ... I feel like I was very lost and trying to cater to everybody except myself … and I mean, like, fans, family, everybody,” he confessed. “I had to really come back to myself ‘cause I was tryna be like ‘Captain Save a H**’ for the world, you know what I mean? And I can’t do that all the time. I gotta make sure I’m good,” he said of the lesson that many artists have had to learn.

The sometimes controversial rapper-songwriter confessed that he was responsible for some of the pressure he felt to meet the public’s expectations. “I made up in my mind about what the world wanted from me,” he said. For him, that meant he needed “to be outrageous all the time … I gotta jump all the way out there all the time, but it’s like, no, sometimes I can just be on my chill sh**.”

Lil Nas X doesn’t need to spark shock and outrage to deliver attention-worthy songs and visuals

Now in his “HOTBOX” era, Lil Nas X has returned to having fun without the drama of past chapters like 2021’s Montero, which saw him as a fallen angel who became entangled with Satan. “I ain’t tryna step on no toes, nothin’. I wanna do me, and I wanna be me fully,” he said. A look at the creative direction for this era is proof that a simpler approach to visuals is allowing his melodic and provocative lyrics to rightfully stand on their own.

Moreover, “This is what I wanna do right now,” he added. “This is where I’m at right now in my life. This is what y’all gon’ get from me. … People gon’ say s**t about me regardless. Let me just do my thing,” he declared. “My biggest accomplishment is basically what we’ve just been talking about, like learning to find that internal validation and not go outside in this world seeking it,” and that is a feat that many aspire to reach.