Nelly — "Country Grammar"
"I'm goin' down down baby, yo' street in a Range Rover..." — Nelly built his breakout single on the playground clap chant every kid already knew, and it carried St. Louis rap onto every radio in America in the summer of 2000.
Cornell "Nelly" Haynes Jr. released "Country Grammar (Hot Shit)" on February 29, 2000, as the lead single from his debut album — a hometown production through and through, written with local St. Louis producer Jay E and rolled out by Fo' Reel/Universal. The stroke of genius was the hook: it interpolates "Down Down Baby," the traditional children's hand-clap chant (the same rhyme Tom Hanks and his kid buddy rattle off in Big), so the biggest new rap song of the summer arrived pre-memorized. It climbed to number seven on the Billboard Hot 100, topped Billboard's rap chart, and went four-times platinum, while the video paraded Nelly past the Gateway Arch with his crew the St. Lunatics — and a then-unknown Chingy — in tow.
The song's real legacy is geographic. Before Nelly, St. Louis wasn't on hip-hop's map; the St. Lunatics had formed back in 1993 and agreed their most magnetic member should go first as a solo act. The bet paid off spectacularly: the Country Grammar album (June 2000) spent five straight weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and was eventually certified diamond — ten million copies, one of the few rap albums ever to get there — opening the door for a whole St. Louis wave. The sing-song melodic style Nelly was initially knocked for became one of the most imitated sounds of the decade, and "must be the money" follow-up "Ride wit Me" made him inescapable within the year.
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