Lil Nas X
The rapper known as Lil Nas X is set to take home his first Grammy Award. He won best rap album for Old Town Road at the 61st annual ceremony held Sunday night. Lil Nas X beat out Drake, Cardi B, Post Malone, Travis Scott, XXXTENTACION and others.
Old Town Road became one of the biggest songs of 2018 and went platinum twice. In fact, it was the most streamed song of the year, according to Billboard.
Lil Nas X also took home awards for best urban contemporary performance and best music video for “Panini.” His debut EP 7 was nominated for best traditional pop vocal album.
His victory caps off what has been a busy week for the young artist. On Tuesday, he won three Grammys including best rap/sung collaboration for “Panini.” And earlier this month, he performed at the American Music Awards where he received a standing ovation.
Early life and education
Monterro Lamar Hill was born in January 1995 in Lithia Springs, a town about 20 miles south of Atlanta. He grew up in a single parent household, where his mother worked as a nurse. She died when Hill was just 12 years old.
Hill began spending most of his time online around age 13, particularly on Twitter, where he used the handle @monterohill. During high school, he became known for making memes on social media sites like Snapchat and Instagram. In addition to posting jokes and rants, Hill often posted pictures of himself dressed up as characters from popular movies and TV shows.
He went to college at Valdosta State University, where he majored in film production and minored in communications. After graduating in 2017, Hill moved to Los Angeles, California, where he took acting classes and landed roles in several short films.
Career
In 2015, YouTube star Logan Paul uploaded a video titled “We found a dead body in the Japanese Suicide Forest”. The video showed him and his friends stumbling upon the corpse of a man hanging from a tree.
The video went viral and became one of the most viewed clips on the site. Within days, it had been watched nearly 2 million times.
Within weeks, Paul was being hailed as a hero for posting the footage, and he quickly gained a huge fan base. However, the attention soon turned negative when several news outlets reported that the deceased person was actually a suicide victim.
Paul responded to the criticism saying that he did not know the identity of the person prior to filming the video.
He later apologized for the incident, stating that he was trying to make a joke about the forest and not the actual death.
However, some people still criticized him for taking advantage of the situation.
