Lil Nas X Apologizes for Not Asking Jack Harlow to Go Gay-for-Pay When He Had the Chance

Since you were presumably alive and existing this past week, I’m assuming you saw Lil Nas X’s new “Industry Baby” video in which he breaks a bunch of incarcerated gays out of prison and sets the fucking place aflame on his way out. Coming off of the “Montero” clip only a couple months ago, I have to ask: Is there any other pop star working today who does the whole “music video as event” thing as well as he does? I also have to answer: no!

Anyway, you might have noticed while watching the video, which was incredibly naked in some parts, that featured rapper Jack Harlow notably did not go nude for it. Harlow says he totally would have though! “Nas wrote the whole treatment for this video, and I followed his lead every step of the way,” he tweeted on Friday, per Variety. “If he had asked me to be in that [nude] shower scene, I woulda been in that shower seen.”

Nas, who won two Grammys last year for one of the 69 million remixes of his 2019 breakout single “Old Town Road,” was understandably distraught to have learned this. “Wait!!! I didn’t know!” he tweeted back at Harlow. “Let’s shoot it again!”

He followed that up with an obviously needed apology to “the LGBTQ+ community,” particularly to the gay4pay enthusiasts (that’s what the “+” stands for) who might never recover from this missed opportunity: “To the LGBTQ+ community, I sincerely apologize. I have failed you. I am embarrassed. I am ashamed. And I will learn from my mistakes.”

I still don’t really know who Jack Harlow is, but I just feel like he could put an end to this painful chapter in queer history by getting naked, personally. Just one woman’s opinion, of course.

• While we’re on the subject of Lil Nas X’s new video, the rapper’s using it to raise money for The Bail Project, a national organization that pays cash bail for those who can’t afford it and is working to end the racist incarceration tool that is the cash bail system once and for all. [Billboard]
• Courtney Love fucking loves Gen Z: “I think they’re funnier than any other generation I’ve ever known, and I feel a lot of empathy [and] affinity for them. They’ve had to grow up in late-stage capitalist realist psycho bullshit online, non-stop, [Instagram] filters, beauty standards which are the beauty standards of extinct elves, no self-esteem, now a plague, and fuck knows what for their future[s].” She also warns us not to tell zoomers their Sky Ferreira or Lana Del Rey stories without saying why?? [Instagram]
• Speaking of zoomers, Dolly Parton is unfortunately NOT the vaccine influencer destined to get Gen Z vaccinated. [NBC News]
• In a new court filing, federal prosecutors in New York have asked the judge handling R. Kelly’s upcoming sex-trafficking trial to admit some new allegations involving unlawful imprisonment, hush money payments, threats, psychological abuse, and sexual abuse of a 17-year-old boy. [Page Six]
• Birdie Silverstein, aka Busy Philipps’ 12-year-old kid, has been cast in a recurring role as an as yet unnamed nonbinary character on One Day at a Time creator Gloria Calderón Kellett’s new Amazon show, With Love. The show will also star Hacks’ Mark Indelicato (aka Justin from Ugly Betty!!) and Isis King of When They See Us (and Top Model!!) fame. [E! News]
• “She is so talented,” past Olympian Dominique Dawes said of current competitor Simone Biles. “I am so grateful that I’m retired because I would have just not even had a chance going up against this young girl.” [TMZ]
• I just think that Kylie Sonique Love: