It seems inevitable that most celebrities get involved in some sort of controversy at one point or another before their career ends. The latest celebrity controversy involves “Old Town Road” rapper Lil Nas X, after the release of his newest song, “Montero (Call Me By Your Name).”
The music video features Lil Nas X descending down to hell on a stripper pole and also includes the singer dancing provocatively with a devil-like figure. After the controversy surrounding the music video, the rapper released a statement saying, “I spent my entire teenage years hating myself because of the s**t y’all preached would happen to me because i was gay. So i hope u are mad, stay mad, feel the same anger you teach us to have towards ourselves.”
The singer is not only receiving criticism for his music video but also for a pair of shoes released to go alongside the song. People have issues with these shoes for several reasons. The black sneaker features an inverted cross and a bronze pentagram on the outside, as well as a black pentagram on the inside of the shoe. Each shoe also contains 2.03 fluid ounces of red ink in the bubble sole. There is supposedly one drop of human blood mixed in with the red ink. The shoes also have Luke 10:18 on the side, a reference to the bible verse that says, “I saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.”
There were only 666 pairs of the shoes made, and each pair retailed at $1,018. The shoes sold out in under a minute when they were released Monday, March 29.
Since the shoes were created by modifying Nike sneakers, people that aren’t a huge fan of the shoes have said on social media that they plan to boycott Nike. In return, Nike filed a lawsuit for trademark infringement against the company Lil Nas X collaborated with to create the shoes, MSCHF Product Studio, Inc. In the lawsuit, Nike “asked the court to order MSCHF to ‘permanently stop’ fulfilling orders for the ‘unauthorized’ Lil Nas X Satan Shoes, according to CNN.
Nike said “MSCHF and its unauthorized Satan Shoes are likely to cause confusion and dilution and create an erroneous association between MSCHF’s products and Nike. In the short time since the announcement of the Satan Shoes, Nike has suffered significant harm to its goodwill, including among consumers who believe that Nike is endorsing satanism.”
“I think it’s really cool that the shoes have human blood in them,” said sophomore social work major Franchesca Ross. “I think the shoes are awesome in general. In regards to the lawsuit, though, Nike said they don’t want anything to do with the shoes, but I saw a TikTok video saying that they wanted all the profits from the shoes. Which is dumb.”
“They’re probably going to flop commercially,” said freshman music major Owen Smith, “but the memes are going to last a while.”
Even if Lil Nas X is at the center of a controversy, he is still making money. The lawsuit from Nike isn’t even slowing him down.
