Looks like whoever called the cops on Lil Nas X last week wasn’t exaggerating when they reported the Grammy winner as a “nude man walking in the street.”
Initial video posted last week by TMZ showed the performer wearing only tighty-whities and white cowboy boots, strolling and posing on an L.A. street just before sunrise — and just before his arrest on suspicion of charging at a police officer. But it turns out that’s not the exact condition he was in when law enforcement took him in.
In new video TMZ posted over the weekend, the “Old Town Road” singer can be seen walking down the middle of a street fully naked, having shed the boots and underpants that had barely covered his modesty. (That he disrobed explains how a concerned citizen-slash-amateur videographer was able to snatch his boots up from off the street and list them for sale on EBay, seeking $10,000 — or best offer.)
In the new footage, Lil Nas X recites some Nicki Minaj lyrics from the Kanye West tune “Monster” as he struts runway-style toward the person shooting the video, who appears to be in the driver’s seat of a car.
“And if I’m fake, I ain’t notice ‘cause my money ain’t / So let me get this straight, wait, I’m the rookie? / But my features and my shows 10 times your pay? / 50K for a verse, no album out,” Lil Nas X says in the video.
An LAPD spokesperson told The Times last week that the 26-year-old, who was arrested around 6 a.m. Thursday, initially was taken to a hospital for a possible overdose. Lil Nas X was booked a little over five hours later and ultimately spent the weekend in a Van Nuys jail pending a court date Monday to set bail.
Both the LAPD and Los Angeles Fire Department responded to the scene on Thursday. LAFD did not give The Times additional information about the singer’s condition.
The performer, whose real name is Montero Lamar Hill, was arrested on suspicion of battery on a police officer after he allegedly charged at officers who responded to the call. Although TMZ reported that he was being held on a misdemeanor, online arrest records list him as being held on a felony count.
Representatives for Lil Nas X did not respond immediately to The Times’ request for comment Monday.
His arrest came soon after he apparently wiped his Instagram grid of old photos and posted a couple dozen new ones, including a selfie posted Tuesday of himself wearing a fur coat, bright red lipstick and both a cowboy hat and crown. “OH NO sHES GONE MAD! CRAZY I TELL U!,” he captioned the post.
In another photo, Lil Nas X posed in front of a backlit mirror in a gold gown, white cowboy boots and a tiara.
“And just like that she’s back,” he wrote in that caption. “We’ve all waited so long. When dreamworld needed her the most.”
Times staff writers Alexandra Del Rosario, Christopher Buchanan and Richard Winton contributed to this report.