‘Grammar’ Punctuates Nelly’s Rap Career

It was just a year ago the country got hip to Nelly, the droopy-drawer St. Louis rapper who combined childhood rhymes with sharp beats for an international hit called “Country Grammar.”

Today, Nelly is everywhere.

After sales of 6 million copies, his debut album, “Country Grammar,” is still in the Top 25, spinning out singles such as the recent No. 3, “Ride Wit Me.”

At the same time, he’s part of Jagged Edge’s rising single “Where the Party At.” And the first album by his group St. Lunatics, “Free City,” made its debut this month at the top of the R&B; album chart and No. 3 on the pop chart with its own rising single, “Midwest Swing.”

This week, he embarks on the biggest tour of his career, playing second only to Destiny’s Child on the MTV “TRL Tour” that also features Eve, 3LW, Jessica Simpson and Dream.

“This is the biggie here, this is our first real tour,” Nelly says. “Earlier this year, we had a tour with Cash Money that was really our first tour. That kind of got us warmed up for everything. Then we did a college tour, which was a good little run. But now we’re ready to do a big 40-city joint.”

Besides the length and size of the tour, though, “we’re also the only males on the tour,” he says. “So that’s crazy. We feel real good about that.”

It’s gratifying too, he says, coming from St. Louis, which is “not really known for music or hip-hop like that. To have everybody, not just from where we’re from, but around the world show us love, that’s big for us.”

Before Nelly and his St. Lunatics, the big stars to come out of that Midwestern city were mainly athletes: “My man Darius Miles, Larry Hughes

“I grew up thinking it was going to happen for me in sports. Once I got out of sports, music was my main focus. I still am a big, big, big, big, huge sports fan. I couldn’t see life without it. That’s why I do so many charity basketball games.”

Indeed, a hip-hop spirit has infused a lot of sports so that kids growing up today may not distinguish between the stars of sports and the stars of music. “The NBA is turning more hip-hop like that. And it’s happening in football and baseball, and it will get into hockey some day,” Nelly says.

It’s likely to spread to other professions, he predicts.

“More and more, the youth are born into the music,” Nelly says. “Hip-hop is 20 years old. There’s a history of it, and they’re born into it now. It’s the only thing they know. It may not be the field they get into, but it’s into their life.”

The devotion to the music in this field is different than in other genres. “It’s amazing the number of youth who live their lives to this music. And it doesn’t happen like that with other music. A lot of people love country music, but they don’t live their life through country music. A lot of people love pop music, but they don’t live their life through pop music. But people into hip-hop live their life through hip-hop. That’s just the way it is.”

Young rap fans, Nelly says, “will become doctors or lawyers, and they still will be hip-hop influenced. The president one day will be a hip-hop fan. It might be 50 years from now, but it will happen.”

Sports and hip-hop are so entwined that many sports stars use their fame to go into rap; and some hip-hop and R&B; stars, from Master P to R. Kelly, try to get back into sports.

And Nelly might be next.

“I wouldn’t mind one day trying to get back to baseball camp,” Nelly says. “I think since Garth Brooks tried doing it, they might let me do it.”

For now, though, he’s busy with a music career--”securing myself in this game,” he says--that includes the current tour, his many cameos, the St. Lunatics album and preparing a new album, “Nellyville,” due in November.

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Nelly & the St. Lunatics make will make their local debut at Power 106’s Back to School show Aug. 25 at the Arrowhead Pond in Anaheim.