Lil Nas X has a lot to feel good about on his jubilant new single, “World’s Greatest.” The first new music from the “Montero” rapper since he revealed in June that he’d been in rehab “for a few months” for mental health support after being diagnosed with bipolar disorder is a tribute to his resilience and the village that helped raise him up.
“I hope your dreams work out for you/ I hope your green comes out the blue/ I hope you learn to love again/ Yeah I hope you learn to trust the plan,” he sings triumphantly on the tune with a classic ATL bounce beat with a chorus in which he proudly proclaims “I’m a champion!”
Lil Nas’ first single in more than a year and a half is a chest-out homage to self-confidence in the face of haters, with lyrics about rising up from the bottom, sharing a room (“5 to a bed”) with his siblings and, of course, a reminder that he is “the baddest.” Lil Nas raps about how his family had his back, even when he was “sad at the bottom, I was S-A-D and how he was able to climb from his lowest to being the toast of the ATL, with everyone in town playing his songs on repeat.
The rapper announced the song’s release on Wednesday (Sept. 30) with an emotional video featuring a keep-your-head-up voicemail from his late mother, Tamikia Hill, who died in August, in which she encouraged him to “never give up.”
Written by Nas and produced by C. WRAY and Steve Rusch, “World’s Greatest” comes to life in a video filmed in Atlanta by Phillip Youmans. It opens with Lil Nas going through his choreo paces in a studio, with his disappointed choreographer lamenting that the MC keeps “doing the same thing … you know what the problem is, you’re just not fixing it.”
But instead of calling it a day, Lil Nas goes back to one, thrusts his chin out and gets back to work as we see flashbacks of his childhood with his family. The song’s foot-stomp beat and fast-strum acoustic bed — reminiscent of fellow ATLiens OutKast’s “Hey Ya!” — then swells up as Nas sings, “I rock myself/ I roll/ I carry myself/ And I walk my talk/ Yes I do,” while the video jumps back and forth between his balletic dancing and scenes of him as a boy, with the timelines intersecting at points as his confidence swells and he masters the body rolls and crisp steps.
Near the end, the song pays tribute to “Industry Baby,” Lil Nas’ 2021 hit collab with Jack Harlow from his Montero album with a repeat of that song’s refrain “and this one is for the champions.” The visual ends with Lil Nas smiling in third position, his left arm held high above his head while his right arm curls across his midsection as he rewinds the cassette and runs it down again. As the song spins up a second time, the loving message from Montero’s mom featured in the preview video bubbles up and the screen reads: “In loving memory Tamikia Hill. Love u forever mommy.”
Fans have been awaiting the follow-up to 2021’s debut full-length, Montero, which peaked at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and spawned two Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 hits, “Industry Baby” and “Montero (Call Me By Your Name) and No. 8 hit “Thats What I Want.”
Watch the “World’s Greatest” video below.
