Review: Lil Nas X brings his ‘Long Live Montero’ tour to the Met Philly

If Lil Nas X had come and gone with “Old Town Road,” the rapper whose sold-out Long Live Montero tour came to the Met Philadelphia on Sept. 22 would still have had a remarkable story to tell.

To recap: That country-rap song was built on a beat the suburban Atlanta teenager born Montero Hill bought for $30 from a Dutch producer who constructed it out of a sample of a Nine Inch Nails song.

“Old Town Road” exposed the racial hypocrisy of Nashville gatekeepers and cleared the way for Black country artists to emerge in its wake. And oh yeah, it became the longest running number one hit in Billboard history.

But that was only the beginning, a starting point in a spectacular rise from obscurity. On Thursday, “Old Town Road” was included in the opening section of the joyous celebration of sexual freedom and queerness that is Long Live Montero, with Lil Nas X performing the song — which included a brief snippet of Dick Dale’s surf-rock classic “Miserlou” — after entering the stage riding a mechanical horse.

Long Live Montero is structured as a three-act play, Rebirth, Transformation, and Becoming, a coming of age bildungsroman that follows our hero, who came out as gay in 2019.

The concept was playful, likable, and self-aware — like everything Lil Nas X does. (In the last week, he’s been in the news for sending pizza to protesters outside his show in Boston, and commenting on his surprisingly convincing Madame Tussaud’s likeness: “Never thought I would get the pleasure of meeting myself. The sexual tension was too much to bear.” )

But the Long Live Montero show was also executed with serious intent and trademark marketing savvy. As the young, diverse, queer-and-straight crowd entered the North Broad Street venue, they were handed glossy programs that emphasized the theatrical nature of the hip-hop popera, promising “this isn’t your regular a— show.”

In a handwritten note addressed to “ladies and gentlemen & nonbinaries, and bottoms,” the star wrote “so much has led to this moment in your life where you somehow decided you want to see a 6′ 2″ homosexual perform on stage.”

“This play is about my journey, what I’ve been through, me being out of breath while performing and my aspirations to continue on my path in life.” The booklet included bios of eight male dancers, QR codes to buy merchandise, and a spread displaying the tour’s various leathery looks designed by Coach, for which the entertainer is global brand ambassador.

At the Met, he opened with the slight party-starter “Panini,” from the 2019 EP entitled 7, the only uncertain misstep of his career. That was followed by similarly upbeat “Domenica” from last year’s impressively realized full-length debut Montero, with the star and similarly buff dancers in matching gold belly-shirts, moving under the watchful gaze of the face of a golden sun atop the proscenium arch.

“Before we turn up more, we have to do some sad a— music,” he then said, turning to Montero’s “Sun Goes Down.” That song lays out his childhood trauma, and the power of music — and specifically Nicki Minaj — as a consoling force.

“Since 10, I was feeling lonely, had friends, but they was pickin’ on me,” he rapped. “These gay thoughts would always haunt me, I prayed God would take it from me … Stannin’ Nicki from morning till dawn, only place I felt like I belonged.”

The story arc moved toward self-acceptance, but not without struggle. One of the video interludes that allowed for costume changes was a short film set in church, with an actor playing young Lil Nas X and the bewigged rapper as a preacher promising fire would rain down on the wicked.

The transformative moment came when Montero’s “Dont Want It” was followed by an extended showcase for the dancers while Beyoncé’s “Pure / Honey” played, and then Lil Nas X’s catchy “Thats What I Want.”

What Lil Nas X wants and needs, it turns out, is simply “someone to love,” and the pop song put the desperation of that plea across with universal resonance. It ended with the star and a dancer in silhouette, locked in embrace behind the curtain.

Long Live Montero is an impressive pop spectacle, but not super slick. All music was supplied by an offstage DJ. Lil Nas X is only an adequate dancer; it’s a stretch to call the show a “play.” And it was easy to tell his vocals were sometimes electronically reinforced, because you could still hear him when he held his mic by his side.

Did any of that matter, as the adoring crowd went wild for third-act hits “Montero (Call Me By Your Name),” “Scoop,” a pink confetti “Industry Baby,” and the laser-lit video game tie-in encore “Star Walkin’”? Not a bit.

Long Live Montero — words Lil Nas asked the audience to shout out, before leaving to “go eat one of those cheesesteaks I’ve heard so much about” — is a tale of an outsider defying odds to transform himself into the world’s biggest openly gay rap star. The imperfections of his first concert tour only make the unlikely success story that much more compelling.