Lil Nas X has opened up about coming out as ‘Old Town Road’ hit the top of the charts and celebrating his sexuality.

The rapper and singer came out as gay in June 2019 and acknowledged in an interview at the time that LGBTQ+ people “aren’t really accepted” in either country music or rap communities.

In a new interview with CBS, Lil Nas X said he decided to come out when the world’s attention was on him because of ‘Old Town Road’ because it “would’ve been the most authentic time”. “It’s like, I’m not doing it for attention,” he explained. “I’m already like the number one artist in the world right now.”

Asked if he was worried about being his true self publicly, he replied: “There was definitely some fear there. There’s always gonna be fear when you’re doing something that’s literally life-changing. But you just have to do it, you know?”

He also touched on how the music industry wants to package gay artists. “I feel like I’m definitely much more ‘out there’ with it,” he said. “It’s always been, ‘OK, if you’re gay, this needs to be sanitised. Let’s not include anything sexual’. It’s like, ‘Be gay without being gay. We don’t wanna know what happens behind closed doors, or we don’t want you to express that’.

“I’m saying that I’m gonna do that if I want to. And I want every other artist to feel the same way.”

Last year, Lil Nas X said he felt “bad” for DaBaby after the rapper suffered huge backlash for making homophobic comments onstage. DaBaby was dropped from multiple festival line-ups because of it and later issued an apology to the LGBTQ+ community.

“I’m not going to lie, I feel bad for DaBaby,” Lil Nas X said. “I hope he grows from it. I hope he’s able to. But I don’t know. The whole landscape is very hypermasculine.”