Other than the phoned-in skits from fellow St. Louis guy, handles most of the tracklist. “Country Grammar” producer Jay E, another St. There are no clear bids for pop-radio love, no big-name out-of-town producers. The record bears no obvious label fingerprints. The album was undeniable.Ĭountry Grammar, which became one of the biggest-selling rap albums of all time and which turns 20 tomorrow, wasn’t exactly set up to be a big album. While “Country Grammar” was still rising up the charts, the album landed. It seemed like it was a whole lot bigger than that, though. In a summer dominated by Eminem and teen-pop, “Country Grammar” only made it up to #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. It took a lot of work to get anyone else at Universal to take Nelly seriously. A young Universal A&R named Kevin Law made Nelly his first-ever signing. All four songs - “Country Grammar,” “Ride Wit Me,” “E.I.,” and “Batter Up” - eventually became hits. Working with local producers, Nelly put together a demo with four songs. If any of them actually succeeded, he’d bring the others along with him. So they decided they’d all try to go solo. Lunatics couldn’t draw any interest from out-of-town labels. Lunatics had a local 1996 hit with “Gimme What U Got.” But for reasons that probably had everything to do with their rap-backwater origins, the St. Along the way, Nelly and some high-school friends had formed a rap group called the St. There, Nelly grew into a baseball prospect and, when that didn’t work out, a small-time drug dealer. had been an Air Force serviceman so Nelly, born in Austin, had moved around from base to base as a kid. With his very first single, Nelly essentially defined St. Louis rapper to achieve any level of national prominence after Nelly has been some kind of single-named pop-rap echo - Chingy, J-Kwon, Jibbs, the late Huey. Instead, Domino, living in Long Beach when he got famous, presented as pure California G-funk - even if it’s not that hard, if you squint your ears, to find a sonic connection between the melodic sensibilities of Domino and Nelly. Louis native, but you wouldn’t know it from his music. Domino, the soulful sing-rapper who’d had a big hit with “Ghetto Jam” in 1993, was technically a St. Louis had never had a rap hope before Nelly. Everything around him seems to move with him. He moves with a self-assured lope, and he never stops, even for a second. In the video, he’s handsome and athletic and energetic. Instead, he stays right on top of the beat, bouncing along with it, broadcasting pure exhilaration. His voice is strained and raspy, but he never sounds like he’s working. On “Country Grammar,” Nelly takes the Bone Thugs approach to harmony and he sells it like he’s a chitlin-circuit soul singer in 1965. People had sung on rap beats before Nelly his fellow Midwesterners in Bone Thugs-N-Harmony had made a careful and intricate art of it. He namechecks Beenie Man and Onyx and Hannibal Lecter and Billy The Kid. Louis to Memphis, Texas back up to Indiana. He shouts out localities that weren’t on the mainstream-rap map - St. He dizzily weaves through the track, veering shamelessly from one itchy and relentless cadence into the next. says on “Country Grammar” works as a hook. Practically everything the 25-year-old Cornell Hayes Jr. But the voice on the song was new - an exuberant holler, strained and melodic. “Down Down Baby” worked as pop music in 1959, when the R&B group Little Anthony & The Imperials adapted it into the doo-wop hit “ Shimmy, Shimmy, Ko-Ko-Bop.” And “Down Down Baby” worked again as pop music in 2000, when it seemed to be banging out of the trunk of every third car.īefore “Country Grammar (Hot Shit),” there was absolutely nothing like “Country Grammar (Hot Shit).” Producer James “Jay E” Epperson’s computerized brass-band stutter-step and blinky synth noises were familiar from the New Orleans bounce that Cash Money Records was just then taking mainstream.
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