Out Rapper Lil Nas X Covers TIME Magazine

TIME Magazine covers the rise of Lil Nas X (screen capture)

These are heady, well-earned times for rapper Lil Nas X.

Less than a year ago, the college drop-out was living on his sister’s floor.

Fast-forward to the release of his mega-hit single, “Old Town Road,” now the longest-running number-one song sitting atop the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 weeks now.

Along that journey, Lil Nas decided during Pride Month to come out as gay as his single continued its meteoric trajectory.

And now, the chart-busting country/hip-hop artist is covering TIME Magazine.

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When @lilnasx's debut single “Old Town Road” exploded online early this year and began climbing the charts, industry prognosticators anticipated a quick rise and fall. It’s now the longest-running No. 1 song in history, having occupied the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 for 19 weeks. It’s been streamed more than a billion times on @spotify alone. All of this has made “Old Town Road” the defining sound of the year, a slurry, genre-busting interpolation of two quintessential American musical genres: #country and hip-hop. Yet even from his perch, writes Andrew R. Chow, Lil Nas is still an outlier. There aren’t many black stars in country #music; there aren’t many queer stars in #hiphop. There aren’t many queer black stars in American culture, point-blank. The fact that Lil Nas has risen so far and so fast testifies not only to his skill, but also to the erosion of the systems that for generations kept #artists like him on the sidelines. At a time when debates about categorization and identity are ubiquitous, Lil Nas X represents a more unified vision of the future, one in which a young #queer black man can dominate popular #culture by being unapologetically himself. “Everything lined up for this moment to take me to this place,” he says now. “Not to sound self-centered, but it feels like I’m chosen, in a way, to do this stuff.” Read more at the link in bio. Photograph by @kelianne for TIME; animation by @brobeldesign; “Old Town Road” (p) 2019 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

A post shared by TIME (@time) on Aug 15, 2019 at 5:08am PDT

In an interview for the venerable publication, Lil Nas explains what having THE number one song represents to him.

“To me, ‘Old Town Road’ being the longest-running number-one song of all time means that…everybody has great taste in music,” says the 20-year-old with a sly smile before adding, “I’m joking.”

“My reaction, just like, me…I was in a complete state of shock,” he adds in a candid moment. “I cried a little bit.”

For someone who grew up poor, being shuttled from one divorced parent to another, it can only be mind-boggling that, in addition to the chart action, “Old Town Road” has been streamed - on Spotify alone - over a billion times.

TIME notes how disparate the stars that have aligned are that brought this to be.

“There aren’t many black stars in country music; there aren’t many queer stars in hip-hop,” writes Andrew Chow for TIME. “There aren’t many queer black stars in American culture, point-blank.”

“The fact that Lil Nas has risen so far and so fast testifies not only to his skill but also to the erosion of the systems that for generations kept artists like him on the sidelines,” adds Chow.

Chow points to social media and streaming platforms for ‘democratizing’ the path to possible success in the music industry today.

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When @lilnasx recorded “Old Town Road” last fall, he was hoping it could be his way out of an unhappy life. Born Montero Lamar Hill outside #Atlanta in 1999, Lil Nas grew up poor, living with one parent or another—his mother and father split when he was 6. As he spent most of his teenage years alone, he began to live on the Internet and particularly Twitter, creating #memes that showed his disarming wit and pop-culture savvy. “It was like, I’m able to go viral, but I’m not promoting anything that’s gonna help me,” he says. “Until music came along.” A gifted vocalist since he was a child—his father is a gospel singer—Lil Nas began writing and recording songs in his closet. When, around last Halloween, he stumbled across a banjo-driven beat by the teenage Dutch producer @youngkio, he saw an opportunity to combine trap—a Southern-born #hiphop subgenre propelled by vicious bass and crawling tempos—with #country, which was experiencing a surge of popularity on the Internet. “Because it’s two polar opposites coming together, it’s funny no matter what it is,” he says. For the history of #music, artists like Lil Nas were the exception, writes Andrew R. Chow. Now, by definition, Lil Nas is the rule. Read more at the link in bio. Video by @khomariflashfilms and @alexandra_robson for TIME

A post shared by TIME (@time) on Aug 15, 2019 at 8:48am PDT

That said, Lil Nas isn’t doing the cocky walk any time soon.

He tells TIME, “Everything lined up for this moment to take me to this place,” adding that he feels “chosen” to be in this place at this time.

The country-trap artist didn’t expect “this time” to include coming out, but, here we are.

“I know the people who listen to this the most, and they’re not accepting of homosexuality,” admits Nas. “I never would have done that if I wasn’t in a way pushed by the universe.”

As “Old Town Road” continued its reign at number one, the U.S. entered Pride Month, and the artist says he saw “Pride flags everywhere” and “couples holding hands.”

And so, he tweeted one of the most casual ‘coming out’ moments in music history.

some of y’all already know, some of y’all don’t care, some of y’all not gone fwm no more. but before this month ends i want y’all to listen closely to c7osure. 🌈🤩✨ pic.twitter.com/O9krBLllqQ

— nope (@LilNasX) June 30, 2019

deadass thought i made it obvious pic.twitter.com/HFCbVqBkLM

— nope (@LilNasX) June 30, 2019

What’s next for the young musician?

“I definitely feel the need to use my platform to spread positivity and do good things for the world,” he says thoughtfully. “I don’t want to be, in the last minute like, ‘Dang, I should have said something about this, you know?”

“From here, I just want to keep making whatever my ears catch hold to and happen to love.”

Read the full profile over at TIME.com.

Mayor Pete & Husband Cover TIME Magazine "First Family"

Openly gay White House hopeful Mayor Pete Buttigieg and his husband, Chasten, cover TIME Magazine with the caption "First Family."

Mayor Pete and Chasten are the first gay couple to be featured on the cover since 2013.

From the profile:

Buttigieg is a gay Episcopalian veteran in a party torn between identity politics and heartland appeals. He’s also a fresh face in a year when millennials are poised to become the largest eligible voting bloc. Many Democrats are hungry for generational change, and the two front runners are more than twice his age.

But Buttigieg’s greatest political asset may be his ear for languages. He speaks eight, including Norwegian and Arabic, but he’s particularly fluent in the dialect of the neglected industrial Midwest. Buttigieg is a master of redefinition, a translator for a party that has found it increasingly difficult to speak to the voters who elected President Donald Trump.

The son of an English professor and a scholar of linguistics, he roots his campaign in an effort to reframe progressive ideas in conservative language. “If the substance of your ideas is progressive but there’s mistrust about them among conservatives, you have three choices,” Buttigieg tells TIME, sitting on his living-room couch in South Bend.

“One is to just change your ideas and make them more conservative. The second is to sort of be sneaky and try to make it seem like your ideas are more conservative than they are. And the third, the approach that I favor, is to stick to your ideas, but explain why conservatives shouldn’t be afraid of them.”

[snip]

Some of Buttigieg’s fellow officers who had used gay as an epithet in his presence reached out to express their support. “I bet some of them still go back and tell gay jokes because that’s their habit, you know?” he says. “Bad habits and bad instincts is not the same as people being bad people.”

All this informs his belief that it’s still possible to reach across America’s political divide.

“We’ve got to get away from this kill-switch mentality that we see on Twitter,” he says.

He has seen once disapproving parents dance at their gay son’s wedding and homophobic military officers take back their words, and so he believes in the power of redemption and forgiveness.

“This idea that we just sort people into baskets of good and evil ignores the central fact of human existence, which is that each of us is a basket of good and evil,” he says. “The job of politics is to summon the good and beat back the evil.”

It's a terrific read. Definitely click over and learn a bit more about Mayor Pete.

TIME's new cover: Mayor Pete Buttigieg's unlikely, untested, unprecedented presidential campaign https://t.co/kMRow7D4sM pic.twitter.com/xmrZaAW7y4

— TIME (@TIME) May 2, 2019

The historical importance of such representation for the LGBTQ community can't be overstated.

What this means to me now is one thing. But oh, what it would have meant to me at nineteen. Twelve. Four.

We’re not there yet, but wow, how far we’ve come. https://t.co/fVbnqrk1bB

— Jeremy Hooper (@goodasyou) May 2, 2019

US presidential hopeful 'Mayor Pete' and his husband Chasten Buttigieg made the cover of TIME. Regardless of which Democratic candidate you support for president, this is historic and awesome! 👏 👏https://t.co/qtbKqoRJwJ

— Jon Cooper (@joncoopertweets) May 2, 2019

A serious US presidential candidate and his husband (Mayor Pete & Chasten Buttigieg) on Time Magazine cover. I wish I could go back in time and show baby gay me this. pic.twitter.com/kKueRbeIzh

— Kade Boehme (@kaderadenurface) May 2, 2019

Donald Trump Covers TIME Magazine "In Deep"

Yep. I'd guess that says it all. 

He's going to haaaaate this, don't you know ;)

Trump Covers TIME & The New Yorker

Photo illustration by Nancy Burson for TIME

"Popular, you're gonna be pop-u-u-lar..."

Donald Trump graces the covers of both TIME and The New Yorker this week.

In the TIME cover, the editors have merged the faces of the Trumpster and Vladimir Putin into one image, because, well, they have become one.

And from The New Yorker:

A little more than three years ago, Donald Trump descended an escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for the Presidency. That image makes a return in Barry Blitt’s latest cover, which remarks on Trump’s performance during and after his summit with Vladimir Putin, in Helsinki.

Donald Trump Gets Another TIME Magazine Cover

Donald Trump covers TIME Magazine again this week.

From the new issue:

TIME's Karl Vick writes: “For the first 240 years of U.S. history, ... our most revered chief executives reliably articulated a set of high-minded, humanist values that bound together a diverse nation by naming what we aspired to: democracy, humanity, equality. ... Donald Trump doesn’t talk like that."

And from Molly Ball: “The inhumanity unfolding at the border has not just been a test for Trump. It has been, and will continue to be, a moment of reckoning for America.

"Trump has often bet that if he just rides out the current frenzy, the anger will fade and some new controversy will erupt. He thinks shock is a temporary condition, moral outrage is phony posturing and that the American people can be numbed to just about anything.

"If there is a Trump creed, it’s that there’s no such thing as going too far. That may have found its limit with putting children in cages. "

TIME’s new cover: A reckoning after Trump's border separation policy: What kind of country are we? https://t.co/U4Uf8bffoR pic.twitter.com/sBCMdHuPGc

— TIME (@TIME) June 21, 2018

Donald Trump Covers TIME Magazine - "King Me"

Donald Trump covers the latest issue of TIME Magazine with the title, "King Me."

The in-depth article by Molly Ball and Tessa Berenson goes into the ongoing warfare between Team Trump and Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

From TIME:

It’s a dangerous moment for Trump.

If he agrees to talk, the notoriously undisciplined President risks making a false statement, which could be a crime like the one that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment.

But if he refuses, Mueller could issue a subpoena, instigating a long, high-profile court battle over whether Trump could be forced to testify.

The two legal teams–Mueller’s squad of top prosecutors and Trump’s rotating cast of advocates–are haggling over what an interrogation would look like: how long it would be, what topics would be on the table and whether the session would be recorded.

Before the President talks to investigators, Trump’s team wants to see the authorization letter that established Mueller’s authority, according to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

They are also demanding the special counsel’s report to be issued within 60 days of any interview.

Donald Trump Covers TIME Magazine

Donald Trump covers the latest issue of TIME Magazine as the Trumpster "weathers the storm" that is the Stormy Daniels debacle.

TIME’s new cover: Donald Trump relied on Michael Cohen to weather the storm. Now the President is on his own https://t.co/Z8L5fYLuCO pic.twitter.com/UfTcklwg41

— TIME (@TIME) April 12, 2018

Parkland High School Shooting Activists Cover TIME Magazine "ENOUGH."

Photograph by Peter Hapak for TIME

Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School students Jaclyn Corin, Alex Wind, Emma Gonzalez, Cameron Kasky and David Hogg cover the latest issue of TIME Magazine standing behind the headline, "ENOUGH."

The article, titled "The School Shooting Generation Has Had Enough," chronicles how the students' lives have changed since the February 14 shooting that killed 17 classmates and faculty members.

An excerpt from TIME:

How a movement catches fire is always a mystery, but the Parkland kids seem matched for this moment. They’re young enough to be victimized by a school shooting, but old enough to shape the aftermath. Like many teenagers, they’re at a peculiar stage in their lives where they feel at once vulnerable and invincible, highly social yet impervious to the etiquette expected from adults. Their bombastic style mirrors President Trump’s: they call their enemies names and hurl sick burns at politicians and lobbyists as if they’re shouting across the locker room.

[snip]

They envision a youth political movement that will address many of the other issues affecting the youngest Americans. Hogg says he would like to have a youth demonstration every year on March 24, harnessing the power of teenage anger to demand action on everything from campaign-finance reform to net neutrality to climate change. But even if none of this works—even if they never pass comprehensive gun reform, and net neutrality fails, and Citizens United endures, and climate-change legislation stalls—today’s teenage rebels will become tomorrow’s establishment leaders, informed by the experience that may already be shaping the gun debate.

And that, says Hogg, is the bottom line for politicians who side with the NRA. “You’re gonna be smeared in the textbooks. Your legacy is gone,” he says. “If you don’t stand up with us now, you’ll be standing against us.”

TIME's new cover: The school shooting generation has had enough https://t.co/4YI173gqTx pic.twitter.com/7yFEXuVjyb

— TIME (@TIME) March 22, 2018

TIME Magazine Recognizes "The Silence Breakers" Of The #MeToo Movement As "Person Of The Year"

This morning, TIME Magazine announced "The Silence Breakers" of the #MeToo movement as the publication's "Person of the Year."

Truly, this is worthy recognition for one of the fastest cultural shifts seen in modern history.

Donald Trump, an accused sexual predator himself, was runner-up. Trump is mentioned in the piece as both a harasser and a motivation to speak out.

From the TIME Magazine article:

We're still at the bomb-throwing point of this revolution, a reactive stage at which nuance can go into hiding. But while anger can start a revolution, in its most raw and feral form it can't negotiate the more delicate dance steps needed for true social change. Private conversations, which can't be legislated or enforced, are essential.

Norms evolve, and it's long past time for any culture to view harassment as acceptable. But there's a great deal at stake in how we assess these new boundaries—for women and men together. We can and should police criminal acts and discourage inappropriate, destructive behavior.

At least we've started asking the right questions. Ones that seem alarmingly basic in hindsight: "What if we did complain?" proposes Megyn Kelly. "What if we didn't whine, but we spoke our truth in our strongest voices and insisted that those around us did better? What if that worked to change reality right now?" Kelly acknowledges that this still feels more like a promise than a certainty. But for the moment, the world is listening.

The Silence Breakers are TIME's Person of the Year 2017 #TIMEPOY https://t.co/mLgNTveY9z pic.twitter.com/GBo9z57RVG

— TIME (@TIME) December 6, 2017

Congratulations to The Silence Breakers #TimePersonOfTheYear
In 2016 a sexual predator @realDonaldTrump was #TimePersonOfTheYear but this year the victims are being heard including Blaise Godbe Lipman and @AnthonyRapp from the #LGBTQ Community. #LGBTPROUD @TIME pic.twitter.com/Y2gv49uXZ5

— TheOUTFront (@TheOUTFront) December 6, 2017

Trump Tangles With Twitter Over TIME Magazine's "Man Of The Year"

Fake TIME Magazine cover Trump hung in his golf clubs

Friday evening, Donald Trump stirred the Twitter pot by announcing "Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!"

Time Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Man (Person) of the Year,” like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 24, 2017

Of all things, TIME Magazine trolled back saying that's not how it works:

The President is incorrect about how we choose Person of the Year. TIME does not comment on our choice until publication, which is December 6.

— TIME (@TIME) November 25, 2017

Of course, if you really want to know why a TIME Magazine cover is important to Trump, perhaps this is a clue:

And then the Twitterverse simply had to join in:

Bbc just called to say I was PROBABLY going to be named sports personality of the year but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!

— Andy Murray (@andy_murray) November 24, 2017

.@nytimes just called to say I was PROBABLY going to be named comedienne of the year but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway! @andy_murray

— Julia Louis-Dreyfus (@OfficialJLD) November 25, 2017

Hollywood just called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named the next James Bond but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway!

— David Schneider (@davidschneider) November 24, 2017

“Good Boy Magazine called to say that I was PROBABLY going to be named “Dog of the Year,” like last year, but I would have to agree to an interview and a major photo shoot. I said probably is no good and took a pass. Thanks anyway” pic.twitter.com/z4pDhvoJ23

— Vanessa Ramos (@thatRamosgirl) November 25, 2017

Mr. President, just to clarify things, I wanted to offer a few statistics. Number of times you were Person of the Year during the 7 years I was editor of Time: 0. Number of times you were on the cover: 0. Number of times you made the Time 100 influentials list: 0. Thanks anyway!

— Richard Stengel (@stengel) November 25, 2017

For the love of God will someone please get this man a coloring book. https://t.co/7nS1jlCDaU

— Greg Hogben (@MyDaughtersArmy) November 24, 2017

I don’t know who’ll be Time’s 2017 Person of the Year, but I must say it would be nice if Robert Mueller turns out to be Time’s 2018 Person of the Year.

— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) November 25, 2017

This really is one of your most breathtakingly tragic posts. Imagine if the actual, legitimately elected POTUS posted something like this.

— Mark Banker (@themarkbanker) November 25, 2017

It should be noted that a TIME Mag photo shoot gave us one of the great Trump GIFs pic.twitter.com/7KYMlSRl9v

— Rebecca Berg (@rebeccagberg) November 24, 2017

Hillary Clinton Covers TIME Magazine

The latest issue of TIME Magazine features a cover story titled "Firsts - Women Who Are Changing The World."

And, appropriately, the first woman to be nominated for president by a major political party, Hillary Clinton, is on the cover.

Here's an excerpt:

I don’t want anyone to be discouraged by my defeat or say that they shouldn’t try or support others who will try. We can’t give up trying. This past election was unprecedented in so many ways. In my upcoming book I try to sort out what I could have done differently, what my campaign could have done differently. But you also have to recognize that you had the unprecedented intervention by an FBI director. You had a foreign adversary successfully influence the election. You had voter suppression aimed primarily at African Americans and young voters. And you had sexism, which was front and center. We have to prevent those things from ever happening again. And some of those are long-term challenges.

[snip]

I also want my presidential campaign to have helped pave the way for young women who come behind me. Because even though we didn’t win, we made the sight of a woman nominee more familiar, and we brought the possibility of a woman President closer. We brought into the mainstream the thought of a woman leader for our country—and that’s a big deal. Everyone who played a role in making that happen should be deeply proud. We ran into some big speed bumps right at the end, and I believe I would have won but for those, and that’s what I want people to believe. We have to get back up and get back out there.

Don’t be discouraged. Don’t give up. The fight was worth it.

Donald Trump Jr. Covers TIME Magazine

Not quite the TIME Magazine cover anyone ever dreams of, is it?

From the article:

It all adds up, in the words of a senior Administration official, to a "sh-tstorm" that no White House staffer even tries to deny. The #FakeNews defense won't work when the Trump family is the one tweeting the potentially incriminating emails. And all of Washington has awakened to the fact that the Russia issue has spiraled beyond anyone's control. There are too many investigations and too many targets--each with his own interests to protect and his own team of attorneys to protect them--and too many enemies created by Trump's bull-in-a-china-shop style. It's not a question anymore of putting them all in a box and shutting the lid. It's only a question of how bad it will get.

I encourage you to read the full article at the link above.

Not-So--White House Covers TIME Magazine

Check out TIME Magazine's new cover featuring the Kremlin White House.

Trump Covers TIME Magazine

(click here for article)

The Cover Of This Week's TIME Magazine

(Via TIME Magazine)

Donald Trump Named TIME Magazine's "Person Of The Year"

President-elect Donald Trump has been named TIME Magazine's "Person of the Year."

Check the subtitle - a well-earned "President of the Divided States of America."

“What amazes a lot of people is that I’m sitting in an apartment the likes of which nobody’s ever seen,” the next President says, smiling. “And yet I represent the workers of the world.”


Read the article at TIME.

Hillary Clinton came in second on TIME's list.

TIME Magazine: The End Is Near

As an admitted political junkie, even I can say I'm ready for this election cycle to be over.

I love the clearly intended double entendre. Kudos to TIME.

Donald Trump Covers TIME Magazine - "Total Meltdown"

Illustration by Edel Rodriguez for TIME

Excerpt from TIME Magazine:

The furor over the leaked recording seemed to liberate him. Free of the “shackles”–his own tweeted word–Trump reduced his campaign to a primal grunt.

It sounded, at times, like the last gasp of the angry white man. Trump threatened to throw his opponent in jail, bragged of avoiding income taxes and peddled an empty conspiracy theory about undocumented immigrants’ being given voter-registration cards. He insisted he was right to stoke the racial tensions of New York City during the Central Park jogger drama in the 1990s, refusing to accept the DNA proof that he had the case wrong. He promoted a fiction that Muslim friends of the San Bernardino, Calif., terrorists knew their plans but failed to alert authorities, and he injected a crude Russian propaganda effort into one of his rallies without a care about its inaccuracy. Another tape (it wasn’t easy keeping track) caught him agreeing as a radio shock jock labeled his daughter Ivanka “a piece of ass.” Having congratulated himself for keeping the first presidential debate slightly above the muck, in Round 2 he plunged into the wallow, deflecting attention from his own vulgarity by saddling Clinton with the alleged sexual sins of her husband and trying to seat Bill Clinton’s accusers in the front row.

Trump once said on the campaign trail that he would approve of torture as President, “even if it doesn’t work.” With four weeks left to Election Day, he seemed to be testing the proposition on the public. Unshackled, he flirted with unhinged and erased the emollient line between a campaign aimed at the base and one intended to debase.

Donald Trump Covers TIME Magazine - "Meltdown."

Donald Trump covers the new issue of TIME Magazine but it's probably not a cover the Trumpster will frame and hang on the wall.

And the cover image is only the beginning as TIME delves into what may be the biggest presidential meltdown in history.

Well worth the read, here's just a few highlights:

On Trump's disintegrating relationship with RNC Chairman Reince Priebus:

But every bond has its breaking point. For this partnership, the moment nearly arrived in early August. Priebus was on vacation when he learned that Trump had declined to endorse Paul Ryan, the Speaker of the House and a close friend. The chairman had a frank message for the nominee, according to two Republican officials briefed on the call. Priebus told Trump that internal GOP polling suggested he was on track to lose the election. And if Trump didn’t turn around his campaign over the coming weeks, the Republican National Committee would consider redirecting party resources and machinery to House and Senate races.

On the mood behind the scenes at Team Trump:

Like the rest of the party, Trump’s staff has been flummoxed by his political naiveté. They describe a candidate who doesn’t understand the basics of modern campaigns, from why you knock on doors to how to read a poll to why he should be dialing for dollars more aggressively. His headquarters has enough palace intrigue and warring fiefs to rival the fictional badlands of Westeros. “You’re always afraid of getting fired,” says one staffer, “but it’s his fault, not ours.”

Donald Trump Can't Believe He's Not Time's "Person Of The Year"

Bitter - party of one...

I told you @TIME Magazine would never pick me as person of the year despite being the big favorite They picked person who is ruining Germany

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 9, 2015