(Columbia Records)This blockbuster debut album matches its eclecticism and broad emotional range with high-quality hooks throughout – and all with the rapper’s sexuality front and centre
![Lil Nas X: Montero review – pop-rap at its proudest, biggest and best](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/cd0ca9015bdff8d680c14e666ca3bc96405f39c5/0_1231_4888_2932/master/4888.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctcmV2aWV3LTUucG5n&enable=upscale&s=1db5ad77ba1bb5ff7472239f35b3d5cb)
Lil Nas X’s debut album Montero arrives accompanied by not one, but two huge advertising tie-ins. In the first commercial, he shills Taco Bell’s Toasted Breakfast Burritos in a pink pompadour wig. Then there’s a series of adverts for
Uber Eats, in which his comic foil is Elton John, one of Montero’s guest stars, albeit a low-key one, contributing piano.
They’re the kind of big-money gigs you only get if you’re in pop’s upper echelons, which Lil Nas X undoubtedly is. Since he bought a beat online for $30 and turned it into Old Town Road – which became the longest-running No 1 single in US history, sold 18.5m copies and provoked a debate about genre boundaries and country music’s attitude to race – the 22-year-old has been a constant presence at the top of the charts: five more platinum singles, and so many awards and nominations they require their own Wikipedia page.