nelly

1006. ‘Over and Over’, by Nelly ft. Tim McGraw

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

In this post-Lil Nas X world, mixing country and rap together is nothing new. But I recall this next number one feeling like a bit of a novelty at the time…

Over and Over, by Nelly (his 3rd of four #1s) ft. Tim McGraw (his 1st and only #1)

1 week, from 27th February – 6th March 2005

Not that ‘Over and Over’ is particularly ‘country’. It’s a gentle pop song, with a lilting guitar. The most country thing about is Tim McGraw’s raspy drawl, and the Stetson he wears in the video. At the same time, this isn’t particularly a rap track either. Nelly even sings. Sort of. So, having called this ‘country rap’, in the end we’re left with more of a smooth R&B record.

That novelty feeling is about the only thing I recall about this song, as it is relatively unmemorable. It starts off lowkey, with both men singing like they’re babysitting and are just getting the kid off to sleep, but never really picks up. It’s fine. It’s a nice enough slow jam. I’m just not sure why this had the legs to make it to #1. Was it the lack of competition, and low sales? Was it Nelly’s star power? Was it said novelty factor? Whatever it was, Nelly becomes the third act in a row to enjoy a chart-topping spring follow-up to an autumnal lead single #1.

Looking into it a little more, country rap (also known, quite wonderfully, as ‘hick-hop’) had originated back in the late ‘90s. So perhaps we can view a record like this as being a breakthrough moment for the genre, with it making #1 in the UK and Australia, and #3 in the US. It is interesting that it made the top in Britain, and not America, but – like reggae – C&W has been an intermittently popular genre in the UK since the charts began.

Not only did this blending of genres lead to some of the huge country-rap hits of recent years, it also led to ‘bro-country’, in which male country stars started incorporate rapping and syncopated beats into songs about trucks, guns, beer and the like. Tim McGraw himself could be seen as a forefather of that genre. Bro-country (thankfully) hasn’t made much of an impact in the UK charts, while this is by far the biggest of Tim McGraw’s British hits, and the only one to ever make the Top 40.

This was also the tail-end of a career high for Nelly who, although he would return to the Top 10, and to #1 one final time, wouldn’t manage hit singles quite as consistently with his subsequent albums. He was always an interesting rapper, one who seemed a bit removed from the bigger, more posturing personalities of say 50 Cent or Jay-Z, and one who seemed happier to embrace a pop sound on his records. Which is probably why he has several more #1s than those more illustrious hip-hop stars.

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989. ‘My Place’ / ‘Flap Your Wings’, by Nelly

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

2004 has been a very US-centric, hip-hop-&B sounding year on the British charts. An Usher double, the dreaded Frankee & Eamon, Mario Winans… Now here’s another slow-jam from Nelly.

My Place / Flap Your Wings, by Nelly (his 2nd of four #1s)

1 week, from 5th – 12th September 2004

This double-A passed me by at the time, despite being in a fairly avid chart-watching phase in my life. I was about to start my second year at university the week this was at #1, so maybe my mind was elsewhere. But listening to it now, I like it. I like the smooth old-school soul of ‘My Place’, and the futuristic beats on ‘Flap Your Wings’, and would label it as one of the better of this year’s American number ones.

‘My Place’ enjoys the benefit of having three different samples from the late-seventies and early-eighties – Labelle, DeBarge, and Teddy Pendergrass – all of which give it an upbeat, soulful, disco-tinged feel. It doesn’t grab me with a killer hook, but it is a perfectly pleasant way to spend four and a half minutes. At least it isn’t mopey and self-pitying, like many of the year’s other R&B hits, while the chorus is delivered very smoothly by a sadly uncredited Jaheim.

The beat and Nelly’s half-sung/half-rapped delivery are very similar to his first chart-topper, ‘Dilemma’, but not so similar as to make it feel like a cynical retread. And that was a gigantic hit, so it’s understandable that he was tempted to revisit it. Speaking of retreads…

‘Flap Your Wings’ meanwhile harks back to Nelly’s 2002 #3 hit ‘Hot in Herre’, not so much in the sound as in the tempo, the beat, and the meter of his delivery. And in the lyrics about sweat drippin’ all over your body… It’s not as catchy, or as memorable, as ‘Hot in Herre’, but there’s definitely something there in the repetitive beat and the saucy lyrics. At least I think Drop down and get your eagle on girl… must be somehow dirty.

It was produced by the Neptunes, with Pharrell Williams popping up for one line mid-song. This was the first UK #1 credit enjoyed by an act responsible for dictating how much of the decade’s hip-hop and R&B would sound, with Williams a decade away from the trio of million-selling hits he’d enjoy in 2013-14. However, I would say that this song also feels like a warm-up for their era-defining turn on Snoop Dogg’s ‘Drop It Like It’s Hot’, an even more minimalist hip-hop hit that would chart a few weeks later.

Both these tracks came from Nelly’s double-album ‘Sweat / Suit’ – I’ll leave it to you to guess which song is from which side – and had been released with ‘Flap Your Wings’ as the lead single a month earlier, making #88. Once the order was switched it entered at the top, and became the only truly solo #1 from Nelly’s four chart-toppers.

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939. ‘Dilemma’, by Nelly ft. Kelly Rowland

/ UK #1s blog / 5 Comments

Our next number one was a huge hit, a very popular song then that remains so now. Many of its lyrics and hooks are familiar to me, despite not listening to the song very often in the intervening twenty years or so. And yet…

Dilemma, by Nelly (his 1st of four #1s) ft. Kelly Rowland (her 1st of two solo #1s)

2 weeks, 20th October – 3rd November 2002

And yet, I can’t quite figure out why this was such a big song. And I don’t really know how to approach it. Is it cheesy? It is an unabashed love song… Or is it cool? One third of Destiny’s Child and the year’s big breakout rapper should equal pretty cool… Or is it a novelty? Any song that rhymes ‘boo’ with ‘you’ could be filed under that category… None of this is to say I dislike it. It’s smooth, it’s memorable, it’s so very rooted in my memories of my final year at high school. I just struggle to place it.

Maybe the best way to view is as classic hip-hop, an old-school slow jam in the tradition of LL Cool J. The crackly vinyl in the intro, the record scratches, the nursery rhyme melody, the cheesy lyrics, all become acceptable if this is a loving nod back to the hip hop of the eighties and the nineties. It’s strange though. Tracks like this were ten-a penny on top of the Billboard charts, but in the UK this type of hip-hop rarely had as big an impact as this.

In fact, still, even in 2002, the number of hip-hop chart-toppers has been limited. Eminem, sure, and some rapped verses in pop songs. Was Afroman rap? Shaggy? There’s UK garage too, like So Solid Crew, but that’s slightly different. The last pure US hip-hop #1 was arguably Run-D.M.C, way back in 1998, and that was a remix of an old tune. Beyond that there was Puff Daddy, and LL himself, in 1997.

And yes, the number one is only one record out of a whole chart, and rap songs had been featuring in the Top 40 for decades by this point, but still. If this was a blog on the US charts (where it was #1 for ten weeks) then ‘Dilemma’ wouldn’t stand out at all. But in the UK it does feel like a slight outlier among the talent show pop, the boybands and the dance. A nice outlier, though. A smooth palate cleanser after our usual fare.

‘Dilemma’ probably did better than your average rap single because of the first appearance of a solo Destiny’s Child star (although Beyoncé had released a song for an ‘Austin Powers’ soundtrack a few months before, this song’s success caused her to push back the release date of her debut album so as not to have to compete with her bandmate). Nelly too had just been responsible for one of the songs of that summer, the funky ‘Hot in Herre’. So momentum was behind both of them, leading to the biggest non-Pop Idol opening sales of the year, and 2002’s fourth highest-selling single.

It also seems to live on to this day, or has been rediscovered by Gen Z, as I see it crop up in reels where the ‘ahhs’ are synced with a variety of weird and wonderful things. And then there’s the now-infamous scene in the video, where Kelly appears to be using an Excel spreadsheet to write a text message, which has been doing the rounds online for years. As a songwriter you presumably want your songs to live on, but you have no control over the reasons for why they do…