Transmedia y construcción de identidad en

la industria musical: el caso del álbum visual

Montero de Lil Nas X

Transmedia and identity construction

in the music industry: the case of the

visual album Montero by Lil Nas X

ARTICLE

Universidad de Málaga

PhD in Audiovisual Communication and Lecturer in the Department of Audiovisual Communi-

cation and Advertising at the University of Malaga (Spain). Her research lines concern music,

audiovisual media, music video, and audiovisual practices in the contemporary scene, with par-

ticular emphasis on artistic events such as video performances, video dances, and new stage

practices.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3897-2457

valdellos@uma.es

Universidad de Málaga

Master in Audiovisual Creation and Performing Arts at the University of Malaga and Art Director

of Photography.

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0006-3350-3167

anaalicia_@hotmail.com

RECEIVED: 2023-10-31 / ACCEPTED: 2024-03-22

* Work carried out under the FicTrans project “Transmedialization and Hybridization of Fiction and Non-Fiction in

Contemporary Media Culture” (PID2021-124434NB-I00). It is a Knowledge Generation Project in the Program for Pro-

moting Scientic and Technical Research, 2021-2023, by Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain Government.

Ana Sedeño-Valdellós

Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

OBRA DIGITAL, Núm. 13, Septiembre 2017 - Enero 2018, pp.97-118, e-ISSN 2014-5039

OBRA DIGITAL, 25, June 2024, pp. 55-71, e-ISSN 2014-5039

DOI: https://doi.org/10.25029/od.2024.409.25

5656

Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

visual album Montero by Lil Nas X

Abstract

Transmediality is a new paradigm of ideation

and construction of cultural projects that

consists of fragmenting the messages or

meaning elements of a story between various

media. The aim of this work is to analyze

the visual album Montero, by the American

musician Lil Nas X, as a transmedia, artistic

and queer vindication project, with its visual

imaginary and some actions in social networks.

A methodology of cultural and multimodal

analysis is used to know the intertexuality

and cultural quotes in this visual album. The

conclusions point to the generation of leitmotifs

around the construction of an identity in

transformation and a vital experience of rebirth

or positive change. The generation of digital and

3D graphics, kitsch aesthetics and Afrofuturism,

as well as visual motifs taken from the classical

symbolic tradition and intertextuality and

intermediality, define a narrative where lyrics,

visual band and content shared on social

networks build a personal storytelling.

Key words

Transmedia narrative, visual album, music vid-

eo, LGTBQ+, Lil Nas X.

Resumen

La transmedialidad es un nuevo paradigma de

ideación y construcción de proyectos cultura-

les que consiste en fragmentar los mensajes

o elementos de sentido de una historia en-

tre diversos medios, para generar estrategias

globales de promoción. El objetivo del trabajo

es analizar el álbum visual Montero, del músi-

co estadounidense Lil Nas X, como proyecto

transmedia, artístico y de reivindicación queer,

con su imaginario visual junto a algunas ac-

ciones en redes sociales. Se emplea una met-

odología de análisis cultural y multimodal para

conocer la intertexualidad y citas culturales en

este álbum visual. Las conclusiones apuntan a

la generación de leitmotivs en torno a la con-

strucción de una identidad en transformación

y una experiencia vital de renacimiento o de

cambio positivo. La generación de grácos dig-

itales y en 3D, la estética kitsch y el afrofuturis-

mo, así como motivos visuales recogidos de la

tradición simbólica clásica y la intertextualidad

e intermedialidad, denen una narrativa donde

letras, banda visual y contenido compartido en

redes sociales construyen un storytelling per-

sonal.

Palabras clave

Narrativa transmedia, album visual, videoclip

musical, LGTBQ+, Lil Nas X.

1. INTRODUCTION:

TRANSMEDIALITY IN

THE MUSIC INDUSTRY

One of the trends in the general context of cul-

tural production, which tends towards the plat-

forming of cultural consumption (Van Dijk Poell

& De Waal, 2018; Gillespie, 2015), has to do

with the emergence and consolidation of trans-

media, as a set of entrepreneurial initiatives

spread across all types of media and channels.

Its narrative form or facet was dened by Jen-

kins (2006) as the relationship of all the content

generated across dierent visual and media

platforms to fabricate worlds or story worlds as

planned ctional narratives (Scolari, 2009) and

multiplatform.

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Ana Sedeño-Valdellós, Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

The convergence of media in the technological,

social, and economic spheres makes it possi-

ble to disseminate and distribute messages,

leading to their fragmentation, extension, and

expansion. Collaborative production, fandom

communities’ production, and amateur’ pro-

duction multiply platforms’ content and allow

the growing competition between them to con-

tinue (Ballon & Evens, 2014).

Transmediality, the strategy of telling stories in

dierent directions and media, has several pos-

sibilities that broaden the horizon of stories.

Among them, storytelling involves a narrative

presented from images, words, and sounds,

which helps to understand the multimodal di-

mension (Rosales-Statkus & Roig-Vila, 2017)

and “combines the art of storytelling with a mix

of digital media, including text, images, record-

ed audio, narration, music and video” (Robin,

2016, p. 18).

The record and music industry has developed a

rapid adaptation to the new cultural conditions

in all its phases of creation, consumption, and

reception (Garland, 2020). Since their birth in

the 1950s, music projects have tended to re-

late to visual texts to expand their listening and

promotional media. From there, television pro-

grams, rock youth cinema, and video clips were

born. These formats have been the subject of

some studies from a transmedia perspective

(Fendler, 2022; Parahoo, 2020; Melzer, 2021).

As a format prone to innovation, it is subject to

genre specialization and modication towards

hybrid forms. The music industry has shifted

towards video - a visual turn- (Holt, 2011), which

has become a format for listening to music.

Social networks have increased this trend:

short videos have become the most shared

and viralised format on social networks, where

the mediation of content from dierent con-

texts also converges. Music and those respon-

sible for producing and distributing it (record

labels, managers, concert impresarios) know

that their work goes beyond musical creation.

Musicians themselves are forced to perform an

extraordinary range of tasks and to renegotiate

their appearance in various contexts, genres,

and media products (Jost, 2019).

Music artists construct an image of totality that

is composed of the sum and accumulation of

messages coming from the lyrics and music of

the music project (main content), the performa-

tive part (concerts), traditional media, and new

media (social networks, online media). In this

way, it enhances the transmedia capacity of the

contemporary music industry and generates

both cultural and economic value (Brembilla,

2019).

From the sociology of popular music, the gen-

eral perception of a musical artist has been

referred to as a star-text (Goodwin, 1992),

paraphonography (Lacasse, 1997), or metanar-

rative (Gare, 2017). More recently, Auslander’s

(2019) and Arne’s (2019) concept of ‘musical

personae’ shape this idea of complete identity

construction by musicians, of how communica-

tive management of a transmedia nature and

inspiration takes place. It has, however, prec-

edents in cross-cutting historical gures such

as David Bowie, Madonna or Michael Jackson.

All of them are prototypes of a habitual explo-

ration of authenticity that has conditioned the

aesthetics of popular music. As sociologist Frith

(2001) puts it, good music is an authentic ex-

pression of something and someone.

This paper focuses on the construction of a

specic narrative regarding the identity of mu-

sical artists in the current transmedia context.

Specically, the case of Lil Nas X and his proj-

ect Montero (2021), belonging to the hip-hop

genre, will be analyzed.

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Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

visual album Montero by Lil Nas X

ly for queer representation (Jorquera & Pérez,

2021) or for the construction of multiple iden-

tities empowered by black female artists (Cren-

shaw, 1993; Curiel, 2007).

Following the release of his rst studio album,

the artist has continued his social media activi-

ty. He has begun a tour, including the Coachella

festival, and starred in two documentaries.

2. OBJECTIVES, SAMPLE

AND METHODOLOGY

This paper aims to analyze the transmedial nar-

rative around Lil Nas X artist Montero’s album.

The methodology of multidimensional analysis

(Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2001) tries to be cre-

ative (Botescu-Sireteanu, 2019) and hybridize

textual and descriptive analysis of the quali-

tative nature of letters and sequential moving

images to attend to the dierent states of the

meaning of each material. An iconographic

analysis has been added to this in search of el-

ements of continuity - visual motifs - and quo-

tations from other works and their comments

on social networks. The exhibition comprises all

the music video from the visual album. Below is

a breakdown of the title, the link to view each

video, and the lyrics of each musical composi-

tion (Table 1) for each of them.

Lil Nas X is an American songwriter, hip-hop

musician, and rapper who released Monte-

ro, his rst musical work, in September 2021.

A couple of years before, his early career was

characterized by controversy as an avid fan of

Nicki Minaj, his intense social media activity,

and his creations of micro-blogging.

In 2019, he signed with Columbia Records and

came out as gay, to which not everyone in the

hip-hop world reacted positively. Since then, he

has positioned himself and claimed his rights

and those of the LGTBQ+ community, which is

another example of how music is a generator

of social realities.

In fact, hip-hop is a genre suited to social en-

gagement despite its increasing commodica-

tion, as it “oers an interesting insight into the

struggle for human freedom and aspects of

people’s knowledge of the world” (Richardson,

2006, p. 9), especially concerning the “pleasures

and problems of black urban life in contempo-

rary America” (Rose, 1994, p. 30). As increasing-

ly inuential music in all orders of popular mu-

sic, iconic artists such as the late Tupac Shakur

are an inspiration for global popular culture.

On the other hand, visual content close to mu-

sic, where we can mention music video clips,

has been shown to allow the construction of

social imaginaries (Martí, 2000) around its art-

ists and producers: “Music videos are a power-

ful source of representation of identities” (Ba-

laji, 2009). Many have social content linked to

“the transmission of values and the vindication

of rights” (Guarinos & Sedeño, 2020, p. 122). In

this way, it has been a channel for race-related

minority identities or, in recent years, especial-

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Ana Sedeño-Valdellós, Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

Table 1

Music Videos from the album, links to their videos and lyrics.

3. THE MONTERO VISUAL

ALBUM: MUSIC VIDEOS,

INTERTEXTUALITY AND

VISUAL MOTIFS

Montero, Lil Nas X’s album, takes its author’s

rst name, something familiar in the rst full-

length albums in popular music. It consists of

fteen tracks, fourteen conventional songs, and

one skit, a short piece typical of hip-hop. The art

of realization is a genre trademark. It is music

that is very close to its producers and receivers,

of an urban nature, and strongly involved in lyr-

ics and aesthetics with the demands of black

Americans. A visual piece in the form of a video

clip accompanies each of the musical pieces.

Together, they make up what is called a visual

album.

The visual album, the central gure of many of

the music industry’s new promotional strate-

gies, arises from the need to create complete

pieces of the entire album, resulting from an

industrial context demanding audiovisual con-

tent. According to Harrison (2014), the visual

album is constructed as a uniform visual and

sound discourse, where each song on the al-

bum has a video clip. Faced with so much visu-

al diversity, the author argues that techniques

tend to be sought to give unity to the videos in

themselves and to each other: these visual leit-

motifs, in their recurrence, systematize themes,

staging, and visual formulas. The intertextuali-

ty above is added, a fully transmedia feature;

thus, other cultural texts are cited, situated in

the spectator’s collective memory, and perfect-

ly recognizable, which helps to create meaning.

In short, the visual album is a global product

that interrelates the artist’s universe and story

through the distribution of ocial content via

social networks and everything created by fans

(Sedeño-Valdellos, 2021).

Some African-American artists precede Lil Nas

X in their decision to carry out transmedia work

similar to this one as a form of self-expression

and identity creation with a social scope or

background. This is the case, rst of all, of Be-

yoncé, who has a total of three visual albums:

Beyoncé (2013), Lemonade (2016) and Black is

King (2020). In her works, she has placed the

African-American community at the center

and explored sisterhood and feminist vision

through visual motifs and performance tech-

niques to achieve the aggrandizement of her

central gure and an immersive experience for

the viewer (Sedeño-Valdellos, 2021).

3.1. CONVENTIONAL

MUSIC VIDEOS

On Montero, four tracks are singles with con-

ventional full-length music videos: Montero (Call

Me By Your Name), Industry Baby (ft. Jack Harlow),

Title of the work Video Lyrics

Montero (Call Me By Your

Name)

See video See lyrics

Dead Right Now

See video See lyrics

Industry Baby (ft. Jack

Harlow)

See video See lyrics

That’s What I Want

See video See lyrics

The Art of Realization

See video See lyrics

Scoop (ft. Doja Cat)

See video See lyrics

One of Me (ft. Elton John)

See video See lyrics

Lost in the Citadel

See video See lyrics

Dolla Sign Slime (ft. Me-

gan Thee Stallion)

See video See lyrics

Tales of Dominica

See video See lyrics

Sun Goes Down

See video See lyrics

Void

See video See lyrics

Don’t Want It

See video See lyrics

Life After Salem

See video See lyrics

Am I Dreaming (ft. Miley

Cyrus)

See video See lyrics

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Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

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That’s What I Want, and Sun Goes Down. These

were the most visible singles on the album. All

four cases involve mixed narrative/performa-

tive music videos in which the singer appears

and plays the lead role. These stories are not

complex but are generally linked to his lyrics.

Montero (Call me by your name) is the rst song

on the album, which also opens the visual al-

bum and refers directly to Luca Guadagino’s

queer-themed lm (2017). It begins with a

crane-like overhead shot, the sense of which is

the introduction, through a rural scene where

trees are visible. A pink-colored countryside

brings to mind a colorful fantasy or fairy tale.

After this, the singer is presented as an adanic

character who begins a journey through places

with no realistic solution of continuity, while he

comes across some gures that refer to a bibli-

cal imagination. There is the tree with large fruit

(apples) and the serpent, from which he ees.

The serpent pushes him on a spatial journey

that takes him from heaven to hell, which he

reaches by climbing down a pole dance pole.

This discipline is used in several videos shared

on social networks. Meanwhile, the lyrics ad-

dress a vital duality: “In life, we hide parts of

ourselves that we don’t want the world to see.

We lock them away. We say no, we make them

disappear. But we won’t do it here. Welcome to

Montero”. This is followed by a quote in Greek

from Plato’s Banquet: “After the division of the

two parts of man, each one desiring his other

half,” while the image represents a trial reminis-

cent of that of Jesus Christ before Pontius Pilate

- with his multiplied gure.

The last part of the video continues with this

dance, as he sexually insinuates himself into

a devil gure sitting on his throne. After that,

he kills the devil and removes his crown. At this

point, the Lil Nas X gure nishes transforming,

represented by a smile and glassy eyes, like a

supernatural entity.

Therefore, the plot and connotative codes of

the image are aimed at representing a process

of individual transformation. The sexual con-

tent of the video - Lil Nas X has relations with

the snake and with the devil -and the use of

color - from primary pastel blue colors to sat-

urated reds and blacks that dierentiate the

two parts of the video -are key elements that

engage the audience in the analysis. The use of

virtual scenarios (almost all of them realized as

3D scenarios) combines throughout the video

to create a visual piece that is somewhere be-

tween computer graphics, video game gura-

tion, and naturalistic daydreams.

Industry Baby is probably the most conventional

clip within the typology of narrative videos: First

of all, the singer does not modify his identity be-

yond what is conditioned by the plot, which is

inserted in prison and an escape seasoned by a

choreographic performance, starring semi-na-

ked or naked black men. These again refer di-

rectly to the homosexual vindication contained

in the album’s narrative, included in the lyrics

and the author’s comments in all kinds of me-

dia. The prison space and the plot around an

escape stand out as a unique metaphor for a

ight of feelings and a situation of lack of iden-

tity authenticity that he complains about: “I told

you a long time ago on the road. I got what you

were waiting for. I’m not running away from

nothing, dog”.

That’s What I Want is a story of heartbreak that

places Lil Nas X in three very dierent settings.

The rst two are used to construct a classic love

story between him and another man in situa-

tions about normative masculinity: an Ameri-

can football eld and an American Western

location (the latter is a specic quotation from

Ang Lee’s 2005 lm Brokeback Mountain). In the

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nal scene, however, the story is set in a church

where dressed as a bride, he weeps after learn-

ing of the conventional marital life of the char-

acter he loves.

Finally, Sun Goes Down is a hybrid between

conventional narrative and the following visual

type to be analyzed - visual postcards - which

begins with a 3D-generated conceptual world,

giving way to a story with a cinematic aesthetic

inspired by the 1980s. However, the actual plot

was set in 2017. The artist, in this song, talks

about his experience when he attempted sui-

cide as a teenager.

To begin with, the singer appears in a wa-

ter-lled space that turns into mirrors, from

which doors open into specic visions of oth-

er videos. One of them opens on what seems

to be a journey into his teenage past. There,

he appears at a party known as prom, a spe-

cial time for every American teenager. Lil Nas

X seems lonely and sad and wonders about

himself and his sexuality, in contrast to the ap-

parent normality of his peers, who attend the

prom as a couple. At this moment, this sense

of not belonging is accentuated when he locks

himself in the bathroom and cries. Finally, after

talking and seeing his future self (the current Lil

Nas X), he rejoins the others at the dance.

The song’s lyrics again refer to a scenario of

confusion, negative feelings, and not belonging

to the youth social group in which he is insert-

ed. The chorus of the song says: “I want to run

away. I don’t want to lie, I don’t want a life. Send

me a gun, and I’ll see the sun. I’d rather run

away. I don’t want to lie, I don’t want a life. Send

me a gun, and I’ll see the sun”.

Discrimination due to their physique and skin

color also appears in the lyrics, which talk about

bullying and the emotions of loneliness, anxiety,

or depression that they arouse (also appearing

in their messages on social networks). Despite

all this, the outcome of the song is positive

and hopeful, as can be seen in the last chorus:

“I know you want to cry. But there’s so much

more to life than dying”.

According to the artist, the song is about his

suicidal thoughts as a teenager and is intended

to serve as an example for other young peo-

ple in the same situation. As a construction of

a queer subject, it requires a restructuring of

experience and a departure from the norms of

white heteronormativity experienced as a child.

In this project, “queer is a form of longing to re-

construct outside the timeline of what was lost

or repressed in childhood” (Grullon, 2022, p. 8).

In short, these music videos, which are closer

to narrative classics, contain many references

to the lyrics and their identity-claiming content.

Moreover, they are highly intertextual.

3.2. VISUAL POSTCARDS

The rest of the videos on the visual album are

of a simpler and more diverse production and

take the form of 3D digital postcards. They are

visual texts of concise duration, between 30

and 40 seconds, which are reproduced in a

loop and repeated throughout the song. This

is usually the result of production processes

with lower quantity and quality of economic re-

sources in the production phase, which is com-

pensated for by this generation of 3D graphics.

It is worth noting the variety of settings that

populate the digital scenographies, which are

visually freer, less aesthetically, and creative-

ly limiting, unlike the lming conditions of the

natural settings. Dolla Sign Slime and Lost in

Citadel start with a moving zenithal shot, like a

bird’s eye view, and Void or Tales of Dominica

take a slower one. All have an immersive eect

or an invitation for the viewer to enter a uto-

pian world. Skyscrapers with glass walls that

can be pierced, fairytale castles, and apocalyp-

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Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

visual album Montero by Lil Nas X

tic, urban, and surreal scenarios make up the

scenographic roster of Montero’s pieces and,

in them, we see a multitude of physical repre-

sentations such as avatars or virtual characters

performing basic actions of video game he-

roes. We also see classic animated stories such

as ying, oating, or passing through glass to

enter buildings. This clearly references a claim

of identity construction or experiential transfor-

mation. Numerous doublings of his visual g-

ure allude to the allegory of the döppelganger

or double.

In Montero, the artist plays all the roles; in Void,

his avatar watches his own gure on television;

in Lost in Citadel, he watches himself sleep; and

in Sun Goes Down, he seems to be advising his

adolescent self, which follows the spirit of the

letter. This physical multiplication has also been

employed in the promotional photographs of

collaborations with fashion brands (Harris,

2021).

There are also several occasions where the na-

ked or semi-naked torso is used, either alone

or in a group. They refer to the homosexual

iconography of San Sebastián. Choreographies

of several semi-naked or naked black men are

found in Industry Baby; also, there are kisses

with himself (Montero) and with other male

characters (narrative video clips such as That’s

what I want; a kiss with his partner was also

used in the performance of the BET awards,

Black Entertainment Television) (Figure 1).

Figura 1.

Queer bodies and desire in various music video

Industry Baby

Montero (Call me by your name)

At this point, it is necessary to reect a little

more on the character of the 3D digital image

and its relation to queer aesthetics in recent

years. According to Blanco-Fernández (2022),

there is no real referent in them, which is why

they are more suitable for disruptive narratives,

worlds outside the norm, and utopian worlds,

such as those presented by queer phenom-

enology, whose main referent is the gure of

the cyborg, the new political subject. Indeed,

3D seems to be the most pertinent type of g-

uration to begin to “model worlds, speculate

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Ana Sedeño-Valdellós, Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

Figure 2

Intermission between a Dolla Sign

slime and Lil Nas X’s Instagram moment.

Dolla sign slime

Instagram de Lil Nas X

bodies” (Blanco-Fernández, 2022) and create a

revolution with the construction of more egali-

tarian and subversive identities (Swope, 2021).

This is the most important reference to Afro-

futurist aesthetics, a term developed by Dery

(1994). It is used to indicate a utopian recon-

struction of the future through the black race,

where aesthetic elements typical of science

ction are joined with others associated with

black identity.

Another fully postmodern aspect is found in

the kitsch inspiration of virtual scenography,

where classical tradition and 3D merge. The ac-

cumulation and mixture of these components

of varied origins creates a certain disorder in

this desire to quote and produces a very ar-

ticial nal eect that has a renewing will. As

Meracci says, “The typical modality of kitsch is

to quote out of context an aesthetic and artistic

reference” (2018, p. 22) to completely reappro-

priate that form.

The columns of ancient Roman art in videos

such as Montero (the rst video of the album)

and Am I Dreaming? (the last), with owers and

bushes in unnatural colors that do not hide

their digital gurative modality, underline the

opening and ending character of the entrance

to a place, to a world of one’s own, to a kind of

great theatre where a story will take place or

has taken place.

Medieval references, dream castles, and arti-

cial exteriors (urban, bucolic) allow for an al-

most innite set of visual quotations, which are

re-appropriated to give shape to a utopia of

identity or self-birth that can be seen, for ex-

ample, in Dolla Sign Slime. There, a black king

dressed in golden armor sits on his throne. This

look has been employed by the artist in con-

certs and for guest attendance at events, in an

example of the intermediality of his narrative

(Figure 2).

As the last noteworthy element of these four

videos, it is necessary to discuss the visual mo-

tifs and cross-references that construct an in-

tertextual coherence between videos.

Firstly, they have to do with the references to

other visual texts close to queer iconography,

although they are also related to everything re-

lated to a previously underlined biblical symbol-

ism and specic global visual icons, such as the

gure of The Thinker (Rodin, 1881-1882) in Tales

of Dominica.

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Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

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Similarly, a whole series of visual motifs recur

between the conventional video clips and the

digital postcards and refer to introspective

characters who have visions, invoke, or see

the future or the past. A parallel is made with

the blind Tiresias, fortune teller and prophet of

the city of Thebes, who metamorphoses into a

woman in Ovid’s work. A narrative of self-dis-

covery, apprenticeship, and subjective quest

lies behind the use of symbols such as water,

mirrors, and watery surfaces such as eyes,

which reect objects or are sometimes glazed

by blindness (Figure 3).

Figure 3

As a fortuneteller or prophet in various videos

These visual postcards refer in particular to

queer desire and a series of quotations well

known to the writer for their biblical content

and their use of kitsch aesthetics.

4. SOCIAL MEDIA

AND DIGITAL

PROMOTIONAL TOOLS

The artist has used social media around his

releases and visual works, which allows us to

arm that he has made good use of digital

strategies, especially to achieve subtexts and

link the themes of videos and songs with the

tools that come from platforms such as TikTok,

Instagram, and Twitter.

First, in 2018, he promoted his song Old Town

Road through the #YeeHawChallenge, launched

on TikTok. The challenge consisted of users

taking part in videos dressed as cowboys or

cowgirls while dancing to the song

. Such was

its impact that the web was lled with versions,

mashups, and visual ideas about this game.

Soon after, the renowned music production

company Columbia Records signed the artist

to release his rst album. Then, the song was

re-released, featuring country singer Billy Ray

Cyrus, which changed his initial commercial

strategy. Thus, he achieved a new record in the

1 Compilation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LxwpK-

KK3P4s&t=53s

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Ana Sedeño-Valdellós, Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

music industry, with a total of fteen platinum

records awarded by the RIIA (Recording Indus-

try Association of America). In 2019, she added

to the promotion another challenge that en-

couraged people to appear magically dressed

like in the Wild West and to drink Yee yee Juice

TikTok’s management highlighted the meme as

a success story and took the song to the Bill-

board Hot 100, where it stayed for 17 weeks.

All this experience helped the singer to inno-

vate on the release of his album Montero. The

rst single was accompanied by the launch

of the “Satan’s Slippers,” created by a Brook-

lyn-based artist collective, MSCHF. According to

the singer, the shoes in question contained a

drop of human blood on the soles, an inverted

cross, a pentagram, and the words of the bible

verse from Luke 10:18: “Then he said to them,

‘I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.’” The

shoe was priced at around $1,000, and there

were only 666 numbered pairs. According to

some sources, the shoes sold out in less than

a minute. These shoes were a well-known Nike

model, specically the Nike Air Max 97 (Figure

4).

2 An example https://www.youtube.com/

watch?v=qbhTEvcvmEU

For all this, Nike sued Lil Nas X and MSCHF for

trademark infringement. However, as if it were

all part of the same strategy, the Nike lawsuit

was used by Nas for the intro of his second sin-

gle, Industry Baby (feat Jack Harlow), which be-

gins with a lawsuit against the artist himself for

being homosexual. On his social networks, Nas

has expressed his concern about the possible

consequences of the lawsuit on several occa-

sions. However, this has only been part of the

planning for disseminating his work, which has

created content that could quickly go viral due

to its dramatic and provocative nature.

Because of this, Montero’s narrative spread

across all media and social media, generating

a lot of public buzz. During the process, Lil Nas

shared on his Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter

proles a lot of content created to keep fans on

their toes and expectant. Specically, the nar-

rative was focused on the idea of pregnancy,

where the release of his album was the birth of

his baby (Image 2).

Figure 4

Satan Shoes

6666

Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

visual album Montero by Lil Nas X

All this content has generated a lot of contro-

versy. Still, it has engaged fans and generated

high interest in his music, as all these audio-

visual pills contained references and hidden

messages concerning the album itself. Monte-

ro’s story world goes beyond the visual album

itself and its music videos, as he managed to

create a story around the product that has en-

riched and elevated it.

Figure 5.

Content on Instagram regarding the launch of Montero

Dear 14 year old montero,

I wrote a song with our name in it. It’s

about a guy I met last summer. I know

we promised to never be “that” type of

gay person, I know we promised to die

with the secret, but this will open doors

for many other queer people to simply

exist. you see this is very scary for me,

people will be angry, they will say i’m

pushing an agenda. But the truth is, I

am the agenda to make people stay

the fuck out of other people’s lives

and stop dictating who they should

be. Sending you love from the future.

(Twitter, 26 March 2021)

The social media intervention has continued

on both Instagram and TikTok, with comments

on social media about his personal life and at-

tendance at events, concerts, and live television

performances.

Thus, these visual postcards are full of visual

motifs and can be related, in particular, to cer-

tain controversies involving the artist that are

present on his social networks.

On another occasion, Lil Nas X released a per-

sonal letter he wrote to his 14-year-old self. This

action was part of the promotion of his debut

album, so it was released on Twitter minutes

before the record’s release. Its content helped

millions of young people who identied with

the artist’s words. In this letter, he said:

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Ana Sedeño-Valdellós, Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

5. CONCLUSIONS

Transmedia storytelling aims - and wants to

ensure - access to the viewer’s attention for

communicative projects. While this is a suitable

form from an industrial point of view for the

marketing of cultural products, it is also rele-

vant for the extraordinary dynamics of person-

al image management and the creation of sto-

rytelling. In Montero’s case, the musical project

also has a visual format, the album with video

clips or postcards. It is maintained with a link

through messages on social networks that in-

volve the fans and consumers of this content,

acting as a gateway or conduit to the whole al-

bum universe.

The main feature of the musical project ana-

lyzed, and its storytelling, is the production of a

representation of alternative masculinity, con-

structed in process, in an eort to transform,

where there are continuous moments of ight,

failure, introspection, acceptance of his ho-

mosexual condition, and learning. Situations

of suering, social rejection, and reection

around personal moments are represented in

the video plots and in the lyrics and messages

on social networks.

An attempt to disrupt the meaning of being a

man exists behind the representation of her

pregnancy, her crying while dressed as a bride

in her heartbreak, and her kisses with another

boy dressed as a cowboy or dressed up after

playing rugby. The scenes with homosexual

content are distributed between narrative mo-

ments (love relationships) or performative ones

(insinuating choreographies with completely

naked dancers), with a uidity, splitting or mul-

tiplication of roles, of identities, which in many

cases refers to the dichotomies of good/bad

and present/past.

In conjunction with this, the varied representa-

tions of the artist as an avatar or virtual char-

acter, in many of what have been called visual

postcards, enrich this claim of queer existential

fantasy of emancipation, where there is an em-

phasis on non-normative practices and bodies.

This kind of radical birth or transformation also

requires a spatial framework that is character-

ized by a visual guration dominated by arti-

cial scenarios made with 3D digital techniques,

as well as a symbolism that combines biblical

references, which was already profusely used

in video clips (Monzón, 2013), objects with

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Transmedia and identity construction in the music industry: the case of the

visual album Montero by Lil Nas X

a substantial charge of meaning (water, the

mirror, the eye) and fantasy places (medieval

castles, cities of the future). In this sense, the

visual album continues to use the viewer’s visu-

al memory and knowledge of previous cultur-

al texts to reinforce discursive coherence with

minimal resources.

Two interesting aspects emerge from this kind

of image system, which is at the heart of Monte-

ro’s storytelling. This storytelling is conveyed by

videos and messages on social networks and

by the outts she wears to social events.

Firstly, this hybridization of visual references

and their recurrence results in a highly inter-

textual work and produces an audiovisual ex-

perience where the content and its delivery

through the various channels is highly cohesive

and refers to the kitsch aesthetic, so scarcely

developed by the musical genre in which Mon-

tero is framed, hip hop, and very useful for

sharing content in the digital medium. On the

other hand, a conceptual framework is created

that refers to the individual future of its main

protagonist and creator, Lil Nas X, but also of

the collective in which he is located, the black

queer community. Race and sexuality appear

as criteria of identity denition in a social and

political sense, something that Afrofuturist

philosophy has already invoked on several oc-

casions. The project is similar to that of other

musicians, especially black female artists. It is

somehow integrated into this genealogy, which

is becoming increasingly established as a pro-

motional campaigning and storytelling strategy

in popular music.

The concurrence of this type of scenes, sym-

bols, and splitting of characters as patterns of

representation and the spatiotemporal con-

struction described—fantasy worlds, avatars,

references—allows us to arm that Montero’s

Adanic proposal is coherent with a kind of pre-

sentation in society and exploration of identity

and authenticity that has characterized popular

music. After all, Adam appears as Lil Nas X in

the rst video, Montero (Call by your name).

Montero is a project that makes explicit the con-

vergence of media and materializes especially

in a format, the visual album, helpful in shar-

ing its pieces through the atomization of con-

tent - in the form of videos of songs - but which

develops seriality and a sense of totality as an

invention of media performance that needs to

be ubiquitous but also refer to other previous

visual texts as quotations. In doing so, Lil Nas X

socializes his narrative, shares it, and conrms

the ecacy of the transmedia media paradigm

and its innumerable economic and promotion-

al advantages.

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Ana Sedeño-Valdellós, Ana Alicia Balbuena Morilla

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