"In St. Louis we call all our friends 'mo,' like, 'That's my mo.' And we call the girls 'mo-ette.'" Rap's newest star, Nelly, is explaining the hometown slang behind the smash summer hit, "Country Grammar," from his debut album of the same name that's currently number one in the country. "Our pronunciation of words is different. Instead of saying 'come here,' we say 'come hur.' And you might go to a party and niggas be in there like, 'Yeah! E.I., baby!' 'E.I.' means it's on and cracking."

Nelly is the first hip-hopper from St. Louis to earn national status -- and he's not letting anyone forget it. On tracks like "St. Louie," Nelly puts it down for his hometown the way Dr. Dre does for L.A. and Juvenile does for N'awlins, even crediting St. Louis for his smoothly elastic singsong style. "St. Louis has a lot of blues and jazz history -- it's a soulful place, and I incorporate that," he says. "Instead of getting on top of the beat, I get inside it, as if I'm adding another instrument to the groove. We'll sit on the porch and talk, smoke, bump music and chill all day long. It just makes my style more down-home."

Reflecting on the porch, in fact, gave Nelly the idea for the "down, down baby" hook of "Country Grammar," a hook as catchy as a nursery rhyme. "We'll have kids running up and down the block all day, playing ghetto games," Nelly explains. "We can't afford all the high-priced games, so we make up our games and our own chants; 'down, down baby' is just a chant from one of those games."

Nelly entered the rap game in 1993, when he hooked up with high school pals Kyjuan, Ali (a.k.a. Big Lee), Murphy Lee and Nelly's little brother, City Spud, to form the St. Lunatics, a sort of cornhusking Cash Money Millionaires who pepper "Country Grammar" with cameos. According to Nelly, he considers himself a St. Lunatic first. "In our camp, no one sounds the same," he says, adding that a St. Lunatics group album should follow in 2001. "We're five opposites that attract, and that's what makes it unique."

Nelly's record is filled with hard-edged street rhymes set to a synth-driven sound that comes off something like Swizz Beatz sitting on a porch sipping iced tea. "It ain't gangsta, but -- it's gangsta," Nelly says. "I ain't one for pop shit, but I don't come off in a hard way, either. We're in the middle of the country, so we got influences from all over."

Lyrically, Nelly's all over the map, as well: On "Utha Side" he preaches against gang life, but the next song, "Tho Dem Wrappas," finds him smoking blunts and getting a blow job. "That's just life," he says. "You can be riding down the street, listening to a song and chillin', but by the time the next song comes on, you could see a guy get shot."

Nelly attributes some of his success to the drive and independence he learned growing up in a family that continually moved around -- from Texas to Spain to Missouri to wherever his father's Air Force postings took them. "I went to eight different schools as a child; four of them I was kicked out of," Nelly says. "I was a bad little fucker, always fighting. I never was in one place for too long, living with my mom, my dad, my grandparents, my mom's friends, my daddy's friends."

As a teenager, Nelly almost made it as a professional baseball player -- he attended training camps for the Atlanta Braves and Pittsburgh Pirates -- before turning to gang life. "Baseball was my first love," he says. "But I got wrapped up in the streets. Money was coming in faster than [team] letters, and I got distracted. I had to get off the block, and rapping did it."

Now, Nelly's finding that life as a baller is his big payback. "People used to make fun of the way we talk. Now we're flipping the script," he says. "My whole purpose was to make people who speak country grammar not ashamed of how they talk, and turn it into the hot slang. 'Country Grammar' is a celebration of having a national album come out of St. Louis. We're on a whole other level now, so let's kick it. And in St. Louis, we kick it."

[From Issue 849 — September 14, 2000]