Lil Nas X takes ACL Fest on an epic hero's journey

Lil Nas X's debut appearance at the Austin City Limits Music Festival was a triumphant hero's journey in three acts.

It was a spectacular display of fashion and acrobatic dance, a celebration of Black queer sexuality and a headliner-worthy set that happened to take place at sunset.

It was a dreamy fairytale with a palace, a neon rodeo and leather chaps, a delirious turn-up with mosh pits and twerking.

It also was a middle finger to the haters, as the meme phenom proved he has earned every bit of the acclaim he’s enjoyed since shaking down the country music industry with the tongue-in-cheek rap tale “Old Town Road.”

Ten minutes before the artist also known as Montero Lamar Hill took the stage, a steady stream of people made the pilgrimage across Zilker Park toward the skyline stage where the logo for his Long Live Montero tour was emblazoned on a black screen. Fans of all ages packed into a massive throng that stretched deep into the park.

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At 6:07 p.m., a wild cheer went up at the front of the crowd. Moments later, a disembodied voice informed us that we were about to take a journey. It offered an invitation to set our feminine side free. And then our odyssey began.

A goddess figure appeared on the big  screen to deliver our hero's origin story at the top of Act 1: "Rebirth." Celestial souls travel through light and space to make it to Earth, she told us. One day, our boy found himself in music, and his music found us.

And then he was among us, clad in gold plates and leather like some sort of space-age Roman gladiator or a deconstructed Transformer with glistening abs.

Thunder roared from the crowd.

He made it clear from the jump that he wasn’t taking the oppressive heat as an excuse. "You better move your (expletive) bodies. Period," we were admonished. Then with a seven-piece, all-male dance crew at his back and a sea of people in front of him losing their minds, he launched into "Panini."

The sad section of the set came early. He wallowed in the darkness of “Tales of Dominica” before the stage shifted to a glamorous boudoir for "Sun Goes Down," and tens of thousands of hands swayed in unison as he relived old insecurities through sweet falsetto.

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Then began the transformation. On the big screen, animated butterfly Nas flitted like Tinkerbell through an enchanted tea set. A montage of images broke down the story of his rise, from leasing a now-iconic beat on Austin-based online music marketplace Beat Stars to his reincarnation as Lil Nas X, a Billy Ray Cyrus collaborator who remade country for the hip-hop generation

A golden Trojan horse and a dance team in leather chaps led us down the “Old Town Road” while the cityscape shifted to the neon rodeo and the cowfolk of Zilker, young and old, raised their voices to sing along.

"Being brave comes at a high cost," we were warned as a swarm of gold butterflies fluttered on the big screen at the beginning of Act 2: "Transformation." Then, the dancers emerged as ominous figures cloaked in black with silver face masks. Churchy organ strains led into “Dead Right Now” before the dancers uncloaked and Nas, clad in Renaissance-style neon pink ruffles and an ornate brocade cropped jacket, was surrounded on a luxurious settee by his crew. Vogueing and ballroom prancing ensued.

To the sound of “That’s What I Want,” he enacted a romance with a dancer that ended with a kiss behind a fan. The crowd screamed.

Act 3, "Becoming," began with the Church of Montero on the big screen. Our hero, as a preacher with Blaxploitation pimp hair, rained fire and brimstone onto a terrified younger version of himself. “Are you tempted?” he taunted the child.

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“Call Me by Your Name” began with a demon on the screen behind him, but as the song progressed, his dancers unfurled massive silk wings, and Nas became a beautiful butterfly in the garden of paradise.

His soul taking flight, the rest was a party. He invited fans onstage for a twerking contest to his new track “Down Souf Hoes,” worked his well oiled body to “Scoop” and invited his dancers to flex their astonishing skills in a dance break that introduced each one individually.

Religious iconography subverted on a road to salvation, we ended in a pink locker room with his team in pink crop tops and sparkle pants doing explicitly homoerotic choreography to “Industry Baby,” as a unison hand clap shook Zilker Park.

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“That’s the gayest I’ve ever felt,” a 40-something woman next to me remarked as Lil Nas X left the stage to rapturous cheers. Meanwhile, a group of middle school boys with butterfly-embellished Montero hats cheered wildly.

This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: At ACL Fest 2022, Lil Nas X takes Austin on a journey for Weekend 1