Lil Nas X, the gleefully queer 22-year-old pop star and savvy digital trickster, often cuts an impossibly confident figure in public.
Red carpets and awards show stages have lately become international showcases for his impishly androgynous imagination. On social media — his own personal amusement park — his deft retorts to purer-than-thou pearl-clutchers and homophobic haters seem so effortless, they prompt a modern philosophical question: What’s the sound of one hand clapping back?
But on his tuneful, introspective debut album, “Montero,” that glitzy public armor falls to reveal vulnerability and doubt. “You’s a meme, you’s a joke, been a gimmick from the go,” Lil Nas X taunts himself on the tortured “One of Me,” embodying the voices of.