Lil Nas X has been enjoying life in the limelight following the sustained major success of his "Old Town Road" collaboration with Billy Ray Cyrus. The young rapper has been keeping himself busy it seems, dropping a partial tracklist for his upcoming EP, 7, just three days ago. It seems like he still has enough free time on his hands to browse through Twitter, though, as recent tweets of his show the rapper deeply affected by a post he came across about a dead sperm whale that washed up on an Italian beach, and which was found to have plastic in its stomach.
The story clearly stuck with him, as he reposted the tragic tweet with the caption, "how can i help ." It has also apparently driven him to actually take direct action to do something about pollution in the ocean. After a fan suggested he make a song about cleaning the ocean, Lil Nas X responded, “i’m gonna like make a foundation then donate a dollar from every future ticket sale to it.”
He later took to the platform once more to write, “i’m really finna try to help save the ocean. this sh*t ridiculous.” He then seemed to come up with a plan, involving an unreleased song of his that he has teased over the past few months, well before the rise of “Old Town Road,” saying, “ok i think i’m gonna finish titanic, change some words around and give all the money to saving the ocean.”
titanic ⚓️ by me
The earliest mention of his "Titanic" track was made back in November, with the rapper sharing a 30-second snippet of the song on his Twitter.
It seemed like he had found his inspiration for the song's title and theme back in August of 2018, since a Tweet of his from August 6 shares a hilarious emoji-story that he had created as a summary to the iconic movie's plot.