Songoftheday 4/25/22 - I'm goin' down down baby yo' street in a Range Rover, street sweeper baby cocked ready to let it go...

 

 

"(Hot S**t) Country Grammar" - Nelly

from the album Country Grammar (2000)

Billboard Hot 100 peak: #7 (two weeks)

Weeks in the Top-40: 28

 

Today's song comes from rapper Nelly, who grew up Cornell Haynes Jr. in the St. Louis area, where he formed a rap group St. Lunatics that had some local success before he got signed to Universal Records under his own label Fo' Reel. His first single would be his debut album's title track, "(Hot S**t) Country Grammar". Written by the rapper with producer Jay Epperson, he clearly is trying to place himself as the hip-hop king of his town, name-checking St. Louis as well as its name brand beer Bud(weiser), along with touts about his phrasing and his St. Lunatics crew, even getting a jab at MC Hammer's financial woes at the end. And this is all over the lyrics and beat of the children's "Down Down Baby". This is what "Down Down Baby" sounds like...

Now here's Nelly's single, which cribs a whole lot of it for the chorus, but of course no kids song is going to mention blunts, hoes, and bling, while mentioning Too Short and Beenie Man...

"Country Grammar" rose all the way to the top ten on the American pop Hot 100 chart in September of 2000. The song topped Billboard magazine's Rap Singles chart for four weeks, while making it to #5 on their R&B Singles list. Internationally, the single climbed to #7 on the British Singles chart (a rarity for street-savvy rap tracks), and reached the top 40 in Canada (#10), Germany (#20), The Netherlands (#20), and Australia (#20). Nelly's debut album, Country Grammar, came out in June of that year, and spent five weeks at #1 on the Billboard 200 sales tally, and six weeks atop their R&B Albums list, going on to selling over ten million records (a "diamond album" from the RIAA). At the Grammy Awards, the single was nominated for Best Rap Solo Performance, and the album for Best Rap Album, losing both to Eminem for his "The Real Slim Shady" and The Marshall Mathers LP respectively. Both Nelly and this album will be back to the series.

(6/10)

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Part of the big reason of his breakthrough is exposure on mainstream shows. Here he is on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno to the most bleached audience ever that looked like they didn't know how to react at first...

 

 Next up, for a totally different audience at Live At The Apollo in 2000...

Fast forward 20 years for Nelly performing live with a band again in LA in 2020...

 

 and finally, a year later on Country Music Television's Crossroads series with Kane Brown, Blanco Brown, and Breland...

Up tomorrow: R&B group pops the question.