Lil Nas X and Tony Hawk both drew blood for their merch. But the rapper is questioning why only one of them drew controversy.
This week, the skateboarding champion and canned water company Liquid Death Mountain Water launched a limited collection of 100 skateboards printed with the athlete's real blood. "And yes, we sterilized it first," the group tweeted on Tuesday, Aug. 24. The line has already sold out.
In March, Lil Nas X released a collection of 666 "Satan Shoes," Nike Air Max 97 sneakers that contained a pentagram, an inverted cross and a drop of real human blood. The footwear, which was part of a collaboration between the rapper and the New York-based art collective MSCHF and sold out quickly but stirred controversy. Nike told CNN the company was not involved in creating the modified sneakers. Nike later sued MSCHF and then reached a legal settlement in which the art collective agreed to voluntarily recall the shoes, NBC News reported.
"Now that tony hawk has released skateboards with his blood painted on them, and there was no public outrage, are y'all ready to admit y'all were never actually upset over the blood in the shoes?" Lil Nas X tweeted on Wednesday, Aug. 25. "and maybe u were mad for some other reason?"
One person responded, "I don't think it has to do with the blood per se more of you put blood in a shoe then had a religious reference on the shoe and you know a lot of older christans were not gonna be okay with 'gay man making a mockery of their religion' in their words [sic]. Tony hawk left religion alone."
After the initial controversy over his "Satan Shoes," Lil Nas X sarcastically tweeted, "This kid is disgusting. i'm never letting my kids listen to his new smash single Montero (call me by your name) that's out right now! smh."
The rapper also drew controversy over the music video for the song, which contains religious and sexually explicit imagery and depicts him pole-dancing in Hell and then giving the devil a lap dance. In response to the backlash over the clip, Lil Nas X tweeted, "Y'all saying a gay n---a twerking on a cgi satan is the end of times like slavery and the holocaust didn't happen."
Hawk has not responded to the rapper's tweet about his skateboards. He said on Twitter that his skateboard line was "inspired by @kiss the comic book collab in 1977 (I am a child of the 70's)."
That year, Marvel Comics launched a comic book based on the rock band KISS. The band members poured their own blood into the red dye used to print the first issue, according to Rolling Stone.