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He understands all too well that in 2021, there may be no quicker way to pump oxygen into a brand than to let partisan politics do it for you. Nas isn’t just a “digital native,” he’s a social media native, and clearly understands on a deep level the cultural and algorithmic incentives that drive things to virality. If you think it’s not a deliberate, savvy manipulation of the online culture, think again: As Brian Feldman reported for New York in 2019 as “Old Town Road” climbed the charts, for years as a teenager Nas operated a popular Twitter account that reposted and repurposed viral content, as well as advocating on the behalf of his favorite rapper and pop star, Nicki Minaj. The enthusiastic response to his new single ensures he’ll remain a massively popular artist, pulling down brand-name sponsorships and streaming numbers en masse. Nas’ provocations, on the other hand, have done nothing to dent his mainstream status.
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Earlier cultural provocateurs, like Marilyn Manson or “Piss Christ” artist Andres Serrano, built their reputations by deliberately offending a hazy, shared notion of “good taste,” but in doing so placed themselves firmly outside mainstream America. It’s also a clear and triumphant marker of how much has changed in the culture. He actively courted the controversy, measuring his success by the outrage and teeth-gnashing of his opponents - an approach straight out of the conservative culture-war playbook.īut Nas’ success is something more than just a Promethean, reversed-polarity moment of “owning the conservatives” (although it certainly was that).
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With the “Montero” video, Nas affirmed his personal identity as one of vanishingly few out gay rappers by expressing himself as flamboyantly and unabashedly as possible. Kristi Noem, a potential 2024 presidential candidate, who sent her 400,000 followers a tweet that helpfully included the product shots.Īs conservative media worked itself into a frenzy, Nas himself was all too happy to fan the flames, posting a trolling fake “apology” video and joking about evening the score with a line of Chick-fil-A-themed sneakers. The sneakers earned an official slapdown from South Dakota Gov. Since the video’s release and the sneaker announcement, Ben Shapiro’s Daily Wire has published no fewer than nine (!) articles about the video and sneaker controversy, and Christian journalist Raymond Arroyo teamed up with Fox News’ Laura Ingraham to condemn the video on her weeknight program (“Rapper embraces Satan just in time for Holy Week,” the chyron read). But in conservative media, ever-eager to talk about something besides the pandemic and Matt Gaetz, it was like touching a match to dry leaves.
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(Unsurprisingly, Nike swiftly sued to prevent their release.) Among rap fans, and especially Nas “stans,” as artists’ die-hard, cult-like supporters are called, it made a decent-size splash, its outre visuals and loopy premise generating the expected hype for the artist’s forthcoming full-length debut. The video pushes sacrilegious buttons by depicting the aforementioned sexual encounter with Satan, which, if it sounds a little old-fashioned as a cultural provocation, was followed by the announcement of a bootlegged, custom line of Nikes that included real human blood. Far more interesting than the song is its video, specifically how through it Nas used one of America’s most reliable engines for cultural outrage to his advantage: the conservative media ecosystem. Musically, it’s pretty much par for the course with today’s top singles - short, repetitive, vaguely moody. His new song, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” debuted this week atop the Billboard Hot 100 its lurid, baroque video has already reached more than 110 million views on YouTube, and as of this writing the song has nearly 105 million streams on Spotify.