Nelly
Nelly
Cornell Iral Haynes, Jr., known professionally as Nelly, is an American rapper, singer, songwriter, entrepreneur, investor, and occasional actor from St. Louis, Missouri. Nelly embarked on his music career with Midwest hip hop group St. Lunatics, in 1993 and signed to Universal Records in 1999. Under Universal, Nelly began his solo career in the year 2000, with his debut album Country Grammar, of which the title-track was a top ten hit. The album debuted at number three on the Billboard...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionRapper
Date of Birth2 November 1974
CityAustin, TX
CountryUnited States of America
I think rappers are the fall guy because some of us don't have the wits to point the finger back. The thing is when you take a whole generation and whip them out, string the mothers out and put the fathers in jail - the reason I know respect is because my father is the mediator between me and my grandfather. I'm the mediator between my son and my father because I'm old enough to understand where my father is coming from and young enough to understand what my kid is trying to do. When you whip out the mediator the kids run wild and the old people are scared of them.
My father lead by fear. I did what my father said ‘cause I was scared of getting my ass beat. His voice rang so vividly in my head. That it was just…a fear.
I think some of my inspiration came from just being around music. My family was into music. My uncle had his own band and my father use to sing in my uncle's band. If you want to go to the music influences we could be here all day. That's everybody from Michael Jackson all the way up to people in the game now that inspire me.
I think of what my father used to say on every tenth of December, back in my home town, Berlin: Now they celebrate the Nobel ceremony in Stockholm.
In my elementary school, there was a teacher who told us about the chess club, and I just liked it from the very first moment. Besides, my father gave a chess board to my brother, and it was very pretty.
I stand for the Midwest. That's why the album's titled 'M.O.,' 'cause I'm still holding it down like that. My friends and family all call me Mo, so it's kind of like really representing where I'm from and me at the same time.
I think he's going down, ... It's gonna be the 'Revenge for O.J. '
Nobody got paid, it's all donation, it's all going to charity,
On fame: It all happened so fast. I'd wake up in the night and go, 'I can't believe it. I've gotta go to the bathroom!
It's more or less a unity thing, ... I think everybody wants to do something. Nobody knows exactly what to do, so everybody is doing a little bit of everything.
Strength of 100 men? I'd probably just get mad and hurt somebody and end up in jail. I think invisibility would probably be the best thing. I could be like, 'You know what, let me just see what these folks are talking about over here.' Then you could sneak into Rams cheerleaders' locker room.
I won an MVP trophy with the St. Louis Amateur Baseball Association. I didn't even start. I was a sub on this team. This was, like, an All-Star game where we had athletes from different teams, different mixtures. We had, like, the only black team in the league, basically. We had four players go to the All-Star game.
I guess coming after 'Country Grammar' and everybody thinking, 'Well maybe, that was it.' To come back with something like 'Nellyville' and to have people accept it and appreciate it the way they did, that was a great move.
You think you had it bad when somebody put out a rumor on you in the school; think about somebody putting a rumor out about you on the Internet.