Nelly: Nellyville : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

This is undeniable: Nelly is a gifted, witty MC in possession of one of the catchiest rhyme flows to ever hit the pop charts. The question: Where does he go from here? The Midwest bounce he ushered into the mainstream is bona fide, unrelenting party music. Nellyville, his second outing, is a wager that the 8 million who bought it before could do with some more. Nelly's clever lyrics show that there is an insightful cat wrapped inside that Top Forty appeal. He doesn't challenge you, but that was never his goal. Not to say that his lyrics are totally devoid of meaning. The title track presents Nelly painting Shangri-La in his own image ("Forty Acres and a Pool"). In cut after cut, Nelly proves that he is particularly cleareyed about his success, his art, who he is and where he's headed. But in the end, all of this adds up to frictionless music; songs such as "Oh Nelly" and "The Gank" are so empty of any sort of tension that you can't avoid the sense that Nelly's going through the motions. The only flicker of drama on this album is found on the "Roc the Mic (Remix)." Piggybacking on one of the hotter hip-hop tracks in recent weeks with Roc-A-Fella rappers Freeway and Beanie Sigel, Nelly uses the opportunity to take a whack at KRS-One: "The first rapper to need a pension." But even this latest hip-hop skirmish is barely worthy of a shrug. With legitimate, truly talented lyricists topping charts and gaining mainstream appeal, the real-hip-hop-vs.-fake-hip-hop debate is a moot one. In the end, the first single, "Hot in Herre [sic]," tells the whole Nellyville story. It's a solid dance record, peppered with clever punch lines and very likable, yet it fails to capture the imagination. Outside of "Pimp Juice," the album sounds weighed down by the commercial pressures of going multiplatinum the last time out. After five tracks, one cannot help but wonder what might have been had Nelly not gotten so pop so quickly.