Looking back at ‘Nellyville,’ the album that put St. Louis in the spotlight

By the summer of 2002, Nelly, born Cornell Iral Haynes Jr., was high in the sky while he was still firmly grounded in St. Louis. His certified diamond debut album, Country Grammar, released in 2002, spent five consecutive weeks at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. The album sold two million records within a month after its release. Its title track was a top 10 hit, and Nelly quickly approached superstardom. If Country Grammar was an attempt to bring St. Louis to the world, then its followup, 2002’s Nellyville, was the manifestation of that feat. Nelly collided his skyrocketing mainstream fame with the flair of his hometown. Nellyville posed as the blockbuster for both worlds. 

The album, released 20 years ago this week, boasts features from stars like Kelly Rowland and Justin Timberlake and the chart-topping hits “Dilemma” and The Neptunes-produced “Hot in Herre” (which was sampled in Erica Banks’ single “Buss It”, becoming a viral TikTok challenge last year). Across 19 tracks, Nelly invited listeners into his ecosphere—-filled with decadence, luxury, and, of course, St. Louis. And he knew everyone wanted a piece of it (after all, the album includes a skit voiced by Lala Anthony and fellow St. Louis native Cedric the Entertainer, who struggles to find a copy of the album for Anthony because it’s sold out). 

Nellyville went on to sell roughly seven million copies and debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart. It garnered Nelly two Grammy awards. The success of Nellyville prompted business ventures for Nelly, including a clothing line, a show deal, and ownership of an NBA team. Could a rapper from St. Louis achieve gargantuan mainstream success? Nelly proved it could happen on Nellyville. And he didn’t have to neglect St. Louis to do it. 

“What Nelly had become was just this big, crazy star,” Jay E, a main producer on both Nellyville and Country Grammar, says. “He had just got done working with NSYNC on the ‘Girlfriend’ stuff and that was produced by The Neptunes. That went really well. We all saw it coming. He was a worldwide star. We were still in the picture. I was still producing for him. He was still performing with the [St.] Lunatics.” 

Jay E produced eight songs on Nellyville, including “Pimp Juice” and “Work It.” The St. Louis-bred DJ and producer met Nelly in 1996 while at the now-defunct Saints Olivette Roller Skating Rink, which also housed a recording studio. From there, the pair, along with other members of the St. Lunatics, began developing their own sound for Nelly’s debut album. 

For Jay E, that sound involved a mixture of various genres, including the coastal iterations of rap music, while relying heavily on samples. 

“It was just a gumbo of music genres,” says Jay E. “My mother grew up on classic rock and country. I grew up listening to Run DMC and funk. I’m a DJ. I started DJing at house parties and whatnot, and I wanted to start making my own records because, at that time, hip-hop was very sample-heavy. Puffy was sampling stuff from the ’80s like The Police, and the West Coast was sampling George Clinton and funk elements. I knew these records that they were grabbing all of this stuff from…I had these records, and I knew all of these samples, so I just wanted to make my own music.”

The St. Louis version of that style included groovy, upbeat production punctuated by Nelly’s southern-infused pattern of melodic rap. Jay E says he applied that same technique to Nellyville, but with a bigger budget due to the commercial success of Country Grammar.

“You have your whole life to work on your first record and try to figure out as an artist and producer what your sound really is. You’re just throwing darts at a dart board until something really sticks. Once Country Grammar stuck, we were like, This our sound, this is what we do,” says Jay E. “What we’re doing on our own is working, so let’s do Nellyville. It was like an uncut diamond at that point that we knew we had, so we just wanted the world to see that diamond.”

But Jay E, who still resides in St. Louis, didn’t expect success to come so quickly. Being on the producing team of a full-fledged superstar and budding mogul from a city outside of the coasts– much less one without a blueprint to follow–sounded like a distant dream. Being on that team and seeing that success with just two albums seems unattainable, but they aced it.

“To be one of the first groups to kick the door open for St. Louis, it was a lot on our shoulders,” Jay E says. “We had the city behind us. We came from St. Louis, where no one is really noticed from, so that meant, for me, more than the Grammys or anything else. When you come from New York, Los Angeles, or Atlanta, you have so many people who can pull you under their wing and kind of give you business strategies. The whole thing was kind of a learning experience. No one told us what to do or what we should be doing.” 

Ryan Bowser, another producer on Nellyville, credits the melting pot of untapped talent that was already in St. Louis for the album’s success. The well just needed to be tapped. Bowser co-produced “Dilemma” with his partner Antoine “Bam” Macon. At the time, the pair formed a production duo called The Nimrods. Like Jay E, Bowser met Nelly while working in the studio at Saints. 

“Everybody knew about this place, Saints, because they had the best music, they had the best floors, they had the best everything” Bowser says. “There was a studio in the back room. A lot of people didn’t know that. There were a lot of famous people to stop by that studio, and a lot of groundbreaking acts came out of that studio. There was an R&B group from St. Louis that was called Ol’ Skool. They came out of there. Devante Swing from Jodeci was also there…St. Louis has always had this attraction to musicians. It was weird, because being a musician from there, you always feel like there’s nothing there to really take you to the next level, but then for some reason, people would always find themselves coming to St. Louis to mess with some of the musicians that are already there.” 

Bowser admits he felt like there was nothing to take him to that next level as he created the sound for “Dilemma,” which, before Nelly got his hands on it, was an unfinished track. They had just worked on an album for another artist, but the project fell flat. Bowser became discouraged about his career at the time. Nothing was sticking. 

“I’m on the equipment and keyboard, and I start playing some chords, messing around,” Bowser says. “I just thought it was OK what I created. I was just so frustrated. I was like, Man I got two newborns, not making any money, nothing is moving. It started getting really depressing. All of a sudden, I just finished the track, put it in song mode, made a couple of edits, and finished it. I was probably done with the track in 20 minutes because it didn’t grab me whatsoever.”

The Nimrods prepared the track for an artist they were developing, but it didn’t gain any traction. When they heard Nelly was working on his sophomore album, they sent several CDs with tracks they’d produced, hoping to get a placement on the new LP. But after a series of rejections, they nearly gave up. But Macon decided to give it one last shot.

“By the time Bam ends up catching [Nelly], he said, ‘OK, I got one last CD for you.’ Nelly was already like 95 percent done with the album,” says Bowser. “The last song on the CD, which is the track that I didn’t like, is the track Nelly chose…’Dilemma.’”

That’s when Macon, who wrote some of the song’s lyrics, got on a flight to New York City to record the track with Nelly and Kelly Rowland. “Dilemma” was one of the last tracks added to Nellyville. The single won the Grammy for Best Rap/Sung Performance the following year, and the video for the song recently topped one billion views on YouTube. 

Macon still works as an engineer for Nelly today, and he credits Nellyville helping to put St. Louis on the map at a global level. 

“People really started talking about St. Louis after Nelly,” Macon says. “Even when I went out of town, and I had the St. Louis hat, it was, ‘Oh, you know Nelly!’ It wasn’t about the Cardinals or the Arch. It was about Nelly. He put St. Louis on a whole different level. Period. As far as music, it changed the game a lot. Not a lot of people were singing a certain way or certain melodies until that guy really did his thing.”

Since the release of Nellyville, no St. Louis artist has witnessed the same widespread success. Nelly’s subsequent albums didn’t sell as well as either Nellyville or Country Grammar, though he’s still perceived as a reverential figure in rap, even after some legal issues and multiple sexual assault allegations in 2017 and 2018 that have complicated his legacy. (Nelly denies the claims, and he was not charged in either case.) He still tours and performs, and has appeared on several TV shows, including earning third place on Dancing with the Stars. In 2021, BET honored him with the “I Am Hip Hop” Award, and in August of that year he released his latest album, the country-tinged Heartland.

So the question remains, who will be the next St. Louis artist to be as successful?

KVtheWriter, a local rapper, says the city has the musical terrain to make it happen. And thanks to Nellyville, new artists in St. Louis have a model to follow. As a preteen when the album dropped, she remembers singing “Air Force Ones” at karaoke with her family and watching the video for “Dilemma.” She adopted the album’s melodic rapping style for her own music. 

“To be fair, there aren’t many artists who’ve seen the acclaim that Nelly has,” she says. “In St. Louis, we often talk about how are we going to get somebody in this mainstream space like Nelly was, but Nelly was at the top of his game at the time…We’re striving to be at this level that’s bigger than a lot of people, bigger than a lot of artists have even achieved. In this day and age, I don’t know what it’s going to take. We have the talent for sure. It’s just a matter of time.”