Lil Nas X performs onstage during iHeartRadio 101.3 KDWB's Jingle Ball 2021 Presented by Capital One at Xcel Energy Center on Dec. 6, 2021 in St. Paul/Minneapolis, Minn.
Adam BettcherIt was just not Lil Nas X‘s day on Sunday (Dec. 5) when he took the stage to headline a Florida music festival.
While performing at the Audacy Beach Festival in Fort Lauderdale, the “Industry Baby” singer fell backwards while trying to avoid a wardrobe malfunction in a metallic pink gladiator skirt. Thankfully, he managed to quickly recover, popping back up on his feet while simultaneously adjusting his askew bottom.
“Swipe to see me being the king of bussin my ass on stage,” he captioned a carousel of images and videos on Instagram capturing the moment. “The universe was determined to embarrass me yesterday lmao,” he insisted.
Fans also poked good-natured fun at the mishap, with one account dusting off an old tweet of the artist’s that read “Stop asking me why I’m wearing a skirt, i will never trust pants again” and captioning it, “Top 10 tweets that aged horribly.”
Two days prior, Lil Nas X also headlined HeartRadio’s 102.7 KIIS FM Jingle Ball 2021 in L.A. alongside BTS, Ed Sheeran, Doja Cat and Black Eyed Peas. Thankfully during that performance he managed to stay upright without a single wardrobe issue.
Meanwhile, he’s currently up for five Grammy nominations at next month’s ceremony, including album of the year (for his debut LP Montero), song of the year and record of the year (both for “Montero (Call Me By Your Name)”), as well as best melodic rap performance (for “Industry Baby” featuring Jack Harlow) and best music video.
Check out Lil Nas X’s quick recovery below.
NEWS
No matter what you thought of the Kendrick Lamar and Drake battle, there was only one undisputed winner by the end of it all: the reaction community in the worlds of streaming and YouTube. Your favorite content creators broke down the bars, reacted to all the most shocking moments, and helped this showdown become one of hip-hop's most culturally significant and resonant moments in a long time... For better or worse. See, the battle's technically not over yet, but only because the 6ix God's idea of victory is clearly quite different. In his federal defamation lawsuit against Universal Music Group – his label – for releasing K.Dot's "Not Like Us," he named various content creators who allegedly helped boost the track's widespread popularity and, as a result, its supposedly defamatory nature.
Furthermore, the specific allegation that Drake brings up in this highly controversial lawsuit is that UMG "whitelisted" copyright claims for YouTubers, streamers, etc. concerning "Not Like Us." This means that they would be able to monetize their content without facing a copyright claim from UMG over "Not Like Us," and this isn't really an allegation because various creators have backed this up. But a few important (alleged) caveats that people are talking about online need to be clear. First, "whitelisting" supposedly happens on behalf of a record label behind a song like the West Coast banger, and UMG is instead the distributor of that track. Secondly, as rapper and online personality ScruFaceJean brings up as seen in the post below, tracks like "Push Ups" were also "whitelisted" by its team.
Along with Jean, many other of your favorite content creators spoke out against this Drake lawsuit. Zias! and B.Lou, for example, spoke with their lawyer about the possibility of countersuing for emotional distress, as they found the Toronto superstar's accusations and his implication of them very disturbing and misguided. NoLifeShaq also dragged The Boy through the mud, calling him "soft" and positing that, whether "whitelisting" happened or not, they would react to "Not Like Us" accordingly as they did to his own tracks.
In addition, it's important to bring up that many others fans have pointed to how Drake excitedly used streamers to generate hype and reaction clips for his own diss tracks against Kendrick Lamar. The most direct example is with Kai Cenat, whom he texted to "stay on stream" before dropping "Family Matters." Ironically, the Twitch giant appears in this clowned-upon defamation lawsuit as an example of what the OVO mogul's accusations and implications are. And one more thing: there is no direct link between monetization and algorithmic boosting on sites like YouTube. With all this in mind, content creators seem to feel almost insulted at the idea that they only reacted to the two biggest rappers in the world beefing with each other because one of them would allow them to make money. If Drizzy knew the first thing about the reaction community, maybe he wouldn't have included this...
