Lil Nas X’s father has spoken out after his son’s recent arrest.
The two-time Grammy-winning musician, who legal name is Montero Lamar Hill, was arrested and taken to a hospital on Aug. 21 in Los Angeles.
The arrest came after he was found walking on the street without clothes and charged at officers. He was subsequently charged with four felonies after allegedly injuring officers amid the arrest.
Lil Nas X briefly addressed the incident on social media, sharing a video on his Instagram story Aug. 26, telling his fans that he was “gonna be OK,” per NBC News.
The musician’s father, Robert Stafford, also addressed his son’s recent arrest in an Aug. 29 interview with The Sunday Times.
During the interview, he cited the pressure his son was under to continue to achieve the same level of success in his career, having to provide for his family and his fears about his mother’s struggle with addiction.
“I understand how the music business is,” Stafford told the publication. “It’s like a high. When you get to that level, you want that drug again, you want to hit that high again.”
He added, “For a 26-year-old to have to deal with what he’s dealing with — to be a breadwinner for a lot of people, the inability to change his mother’s situation and the pressure he puts on himself…”
Stafford said that he was able to visit his son in jail, but when he walked through the door, he “couldn’t do anything but cry.”
“To see my baby boy on the other side of that glass. We shed tears with each other for a minute,” Stafford added. “And I had to tell him that ‘what you’re going through is normal’. We all have breakdowns every now and then, but the difference is, yours get played out in the public eye.”
Stafford also provided his son’s point of view on the situation, sharing, “When I went to visit he asked me to say, ‘tell everybody I’m sorry they saw me like that’. Even in that moment, he was apologizing to people for something he was going through.”
Despite what his son has experienced, Stafford expressed optimism over Lil Nas X’s future.
“Hopefully, this is a turning point in his mental stability,” Stafford said. “Sometimes God will take you through your worst moment to give you your best moment.”
In a statement to NBC News, the Los Angeles Police Department said that officers responded to reports of a nude man just before 6 a.m. and that the man had charged at the officers when they arrived.
A law enforcement source confirmed to NBC News that the man was Lil Nas X, sharing that the musician had punched an officer twice in the face during the incident.
Lil Nas X has pleaded not guilty to the four felony charges.
In his brief address to fans on Aug. 26, he said, “That was terrifying, that was terrifying, that was a terrifying last four days. But your girl’s gonna be all right.”
CORRECTION: (Aug. 31, 2025, 11:37 a.m. ET): An earlier version of this article said Lil Nas X was in prison. He was in jail. This has since been corrected.)
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