How many rappers do you know that can sell 10 million copies of an album while wearing a fucking band-aid on their face?
I only know one, and he goes by the name of Cornell Iral Haynes Jr aka Nelly. A mere 16 years after being first released, Nelly’s modern masterpiece Country Grammar has just been certified Diamond. That means it’s sold 10 million copies, and is only the ninth rap album in history to do so. It’s probably more towards the 17 million mark if you count all the tight asses who downloaded this illegally off Limewire while simultaneously giving their computers 73 viruses. Remember desktop computers and modems? What a time to be alive. The kids will never understand.
Almost superhuman in his ability to craft club bangers and songs that make you want to purchase an oversize sporting jersey, Nelly’s career peaked with his blazing debut album: 66 minutes of effortless poetry about fornicating and being from St. Louis. Yes, Country Grammar will forever have a place in our hearts and the more nostalgic sections of Spotify, so in honour of getting that forever-shiny Diamond certification, we reflect on the four singles that propelled the album into global spotlight. Listen below:
E.I
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNaMR8AyeWc
There seems to be some dispute as to what ‘E.I’ actually means, although I just did some thorough investigative journalism on Wikipedia and apparently it stands for ‘Employment Insurance’ or ‘Enrique Iglesias’. Did Nelly just make a low-key rap banger about receiving temporary workers benefits? Where the fuck did Enrique Iglesias come from? In any case, the beauty of ‘E.I’ lies in the fact that you don’t know what the hell Nelly is actually talking about. Have you ever wondered why ‘Break Ya Neck‘ by Busta Rhymes is so popular? It’s because Busta Rhymes spat every word in the dictionary in seven seconds and left you so confused and dizzy that you just smiled and nodded and said “Good work, Mr. Rhymes! Keep it up!”
Similarly, ‘E.I’ is complete in its vacuousness. It means everything and nothing simultaneously. A century from now, philosophers will be standing on top of mountains with parchments in hand, proclaiming the word of God: “E.I, E.I, WHOA-OHHHH, WHAT IS UP TONIGHT,” they will yell. Humanity will respond with a thunderous cheer, and the clouds will form to drizzle Moscato from the heavens, dousing the population of mortals below. A few men will be wearing du-rags, a few ladies will be wearing NFL jerseys that have been modified into crop-tops, and everybody else will be naked. By the way, I just looked up this song on Genius and apparently ‘E.I’ refers to an oral sex act, so that’s probably the accurate meaning and this whole paragraph was useless. Also, can somebody tell me what the hell the sound at 0:26 seconds is? It sounds like a French bulldog named Jean-Pierre swallowing a tennis ball while regurgitating a cane toad.
P.S. Shouts to Australia’s Number. 1 Strip Club DJ Leon Smith for playing ‘E.I. (Tip Drill Remix)‘ consistently to this day. Also, shouts to Leonard for being the only DJ to play KoRn at Halfway Crooks in its seven year history. #NuMetalRevival #WalletChainRevival
RIDE WIT ME
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtSDWq6HsJE
Right next to Fatman Scoop’s ‘Be Faithful‘ and Biggie Smalls’ ‘Juicy‘, this little Nelly banger might be the most overplayed club track of all time. White people love this track. White people love this track almost as much as they love fedoras, akubras, kale-infused mayonnaise and privilege. If you’re a DJ, someone named Belinda has asked you to play this song on a hen’s night. Belinda – whose usual Spotify playlist comprises of Wolfmother and ‘Drops of Jupiter‘ by Train – probably also bought a fake Boston Celtics jersey (Larry Bird obviously) from Paddy’s Markets and a snapback with gold ‘YOLO’ embroidery to see Nelly at Supafest in 2011.
Even if you’re broke and living in the pantry of a backpacker’s hostel next to the Nutri Grain, ‘Ride Wit Me’ will still make you yell “HEY, MUST BE THE MONEY” with unbridled conviction. The video for ‘Ride Wit Me’ features a redneck reading a porno on a toilet, a police chase and Nelly driving in a drop-top with leopard print seat covers and a cowboy hat. Oh yeah, there’s also some sexy toothless mechanics – my favourite kind of mechanics. A true cinematic masterpiece.
COUNTRY GRAMMAR (HOT SHIT)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5qKNlcUwKs
It’s always nice to see somebody with a little hometown pride, and Nelly displays plenty of that in ‘Country Grammar’. He begins this song by proclaiming that you can locate him in St. Louis, Missouri where he will be smoking fragrant marijuana and driving a car with unnecessarily large yet impressively shiny rims. It’s no wonder that Nelly is so adamant about representing his city: St. Louis is known for its smooth frozen custard and elite chess tournaments, and if there’s a better combination that custard and chess on the Godforsaken hell-hole known as Planet Earth, then I don’t want to know about it. The video for ‘Country Grammar’ takes place in a good old fashioned block party – please note that I’ve never been invited to a block party – which also features lots of barbecued corn and silly string! No party is complete without silly string, and judging from the amount of time you spent vomiting on yourself at your friend’s 18th while ‘Country Grammar’ blared in the background, Nelly knows a thing or two about hosting a raging box social and stealing your girlfriend.
Nelly spends a lot of time spreading the good word about his city, so why hasn’t he been placed on the St. Louis Convention & Visitors Commission? The St. Louis Tourism Bureau was founded in 1909, so these guys have had 107 years to elect Nelly into the Board of Commissioners because Nelly is God and has existed since the dawn of time. What is going on? Where is the democracy? This is the greatest injustice since Shannon Noll lost the Australian Idol title to Guy Sebastian in 2003. Daylight robbery in full effect.
BATTER UP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HNGaa5Opfmc
I’m going to be honest, I don’t know much about baseball – all I know is that Don Mattingly has to trim those sideburns and that Ken Griffey Jr once suffered from a case of extreme gigantism. However, the video for ‘Batter Up’ has me convinced that I’m a baseball fan and that I’ll be purchasing tickets to the next MLB game along with an overpriced foam finger.
The video for ‘Batter Up’ takes place on the baseball pitch and also features some locker room antics, where Nelly and his St. Lunatics squadron wear denim ensembles while rhyming words and dancing with scantily-clad ladies in lingerie. This is definitely a different vibe from Australian footy locker rooms, where players scream ‘BOYZA’ and spend their days chugging cheap beers, doing designer drugs, engaging in casual racism and sticking up for Eddie McGuire, all while shirtless. In the end of the video, someone scores a home run by driving a Cadillac across the pitch, which may or not be illegal in today’s game of baseball, but it’s legal as all hell in Nellyville aka Heaven.
