“Old Town Road” singer Lil Nas X is looking for an off-ramp from his recent legal trouble.
The Grammy winner, born Montero Hill, appeared in court Thursday as his lawyer asked a judge for a short delay so she could file a motion seeking to transfer his felony police battery case into an unspecified diversion program. She did not elaborate on the type of program but said she was waiting on an “expert report” to support the request. Diversion programs generally lead to charges being dismissed if defendants complete treatment or rehabilitation.
The Los Angeles County judge ordered the case back on April 6. Outside the courthouse in Van Nuys, Calif., Hill agreed to make a brief statement to reporters. His lawyer, Christy O’Connor, said he wouldn’t be able to take any questions amid the pending legal matter.
“All I wanted to say is to my fans, I really love, and I miss you, and I appreciate your support so much, and I can’t wait to be back hugging you guys,” Hill said before blowing a kiss. “You guys, have a good day.”
As he walked away, Hill stopped and asked for a song when he passed a busker with a guitar, smoking a cigarette outside. Jensen Pawley, 39, unpacked his instrument and played Radiohead’s “Lucky” as Hill tapped his foot. Hill handed him $100, leaving Pawley gobsmacked.
“It was a great moment,” Pawley tells Rolling Stone. “[He’s] a nice guy.”
Hill was arrested Aug. 21, 2025, after he was captured on video walking in traffic in the predawn hours, wearing only his underwear. Prosecutors say Hill, 26, was “strolling naked” along Ventura Boulevard in Studio City around 5:40 a.m. when police arrived.
They allege Hill assaulted responding officers who tried to take him into custody, injuring three of them. He was later charged with three counts of battery with injury on a police officer and one count of resisting an executive officer. Hill has pleaded not guilty and faces up to five years in state prison if convicted as charged.
After he spent the weekend in jail following his arrest, Hill called the incident “terrifying” in a social media post. “Your girl is gonna be OK, y’all,” the artist said in an Instagram video. “That was fucking terrifying. That was terrifying. That was a terrifying last four days. But your girl is gonna be all right.”At a hearing in mid-September, Hill’s lawyers said he was “in treatment” at an out-of-state facility. Judge Shellie Samuels sealed the details of the care he was receiving.
“You heard the ‘treatment’ word. We’re doing what is best for Montero from a personal standpoint and a professional standpoint, but most importantly, for his well-being,” Hill’s lawyer, Drew Findling, said after the September hearing. “He is surrounded by an amazing family, an amazing team of people that care about him and love him. And we’re just addressing those issues. It’s really as simple as that. He’s had a great life, and he’ll continue to have a great life. This is a bump that he’s going to get over.”
Before his arrest, Hill had shared unreleased music and mirror selfies on Instagram that sparked concern among fans. Police initially transported him to a nearby hospital for a possible overdose before taking him to jail.
Hill’s father, Robert Stafford, rushed to Los Angeles to support the rapper and later told London’s The Times that Hill had been dealing with “pressure” he placed on himself as an artist and as the “breadwinner” for multiple people.
“We all have breakdowns every now and then, but the difference is, yours get played out in the public eye when you’re a celebrity,” Stafford said. “Hopefully, this is a turning point in his mental stability.”
Jay-Z performing at the Stade de France in Saint-Denis in Paris.
Jay-Z Deserves the Super Bowl Halftime Gig
Where’s the love? Jay-Z asked that question 25 years ago, in the chorus of one of many songs in his catalog that still move audiences today. If he performs “Heart of the City” as part of his Super Bowl halftime show next February, those indignant bars are sure to be a highlight: “First the Fat Boys break up, now every day I wake up, somebody got a problem with Hov…” It would be an appropriate choice, too — because then as now, any time Jay-Z notches a new achievement, people find a way to complain.
The jokes and nonsense started almost as soon as the first rumors trickled out that Jay, whose company Roc Nation has executive-produced the Super Bowl halftime show since 2019, might be choosing himself to headline next year’s show. “Jay-Z just Dick Cheney’d himself for the Super Bowl,” Puck‘s Matthew Belloni quipped on X last week, alluding to the time that the late prince of darkness, who’d been asked to run the vice-presidential search committee for George W. Bush’s 2000 campaign, put himself on the ticket. (Super hip and current reference, and not at all apples-and-oranges.) Others pointed to TMZ reports that pop stars like Harry Styles and Justin Bieber had been asked first. “How are they the frontrunners, and he end up in the front?” Cam’Ron, who’s delighted in trolling Jay for many years, wondered aloud on his podcast. “Out of all the people on the roster, they couldn’t pick nobody else?” asked Cam’Ron‘s co-host, Ma$e.
These critiques miss the point, which is that Jay-Z is one of the best choices for a high-profile gig like this. He’s a superstar with a comparable level of name recognition to any other A-lister in music. He has a deep stack of classic songs going back decades. And he’s a highly skillful live performer who knows his way around a stadium stage, as he’s spent this year reminding people on his Jay-Z 30 tour. He tore down Yankee Stadium three nights in a row this summer; just last week, he rocked SoFi Stadium, which happens to be the same place where the 2027 Super Bowl is being held. He held the crowd’s attention with ease at all of those shows, and though there were plenty of glittery guests — that’s a given at a Jay show, and it will surely be true at the Super Bowl, too — he did it mostly through the force of his own magnetic energy. Let’s state the obvious here: Jay-Z is really, really good at rapping. We’re talking about one of the slickest, sharpest talkers in the history of words, someone who made it to the top through a sustained act of myth-making, then kept going. Are we seriously asking whether he can handle a 15-minute televised performance?
And yeah, there’s a touch of self-congratulation in the way he appointed himself. So what? Praising his own gifts is arguably Jay-Z’s greatest talent of all. He made a fine art out of self-applause. He told his story again and again, retracing the steps from Marcy Projects to the corner suite, and he made us believe. It would almost be insulting to the audience if he didn’t give himself the gig at some point.
Pop culture observers in recent years surely remember the backlash to Super Bowl headliners like Kendrick Lamar and Bad Bunny — all of it at least culturally conservative, and much of it frankly just racist. The blowback to Jay’s announcement is mostly coming from other quarters, at least for now (let’s just wait to see what the right-wing swamps make of this one). But it’s disappointing in a different way. Jay-Z has spent his career expounding hip-hop as a mainstream commercial force. He’s not a businessman, he’s a business, man. But he’s also an artist. He’s made huge amounts of money, and gotten himself into the rarefied rooms where he even has the ability to give himself a gig like this, by spinning his experiences into compelling narrative art, one verse at a time. Let’s not lose sight of how impressive his life’s work really is. Jay-Z is not some random C-suite bro, and he’s definitely not Dick Cheney. He’s one of the greatest rappers of all time, by any measure. He’s earned that Super Bowl spot.