Why Lil Nas X’s Evolution From Dolly Parton To Madonna Is Important

Lil Nas X “pleased (instead of teased) the Black demon” and evolved mainstream pop’s relationship to race and sexuality.

On Friday morning, Lil Nas X’s groundbreaking spectacle-as-music career took another astounding turn as a Black musician evolved from Dolly Parton into Madonna. The trap-rapping cowboy interloper behind double-diamond selling “Old Town Road” has now become the wildly subversive pop crooner behind the hyper-sexualized “official coming-out party”-as-single, “MONTERO (Call Me By Your Name).” Never before, or likely again, will we ever see the internalization, reclamation, and simultaneous evolution and retrofitting of the African-borne and white-embraced whore stereotype in American culture.

In 2013, we almost lost the three-century-old — and in need of permanent recontextualization — Black-to-whore analog forever.

The line from Sarah “Hottentot Venus” Baartman (a South African Khoikhoi woman who, as a dancer, had her…