So what does success feel like? 

Nelly: I appreciate it, you know what I'm saying? We're still working hard, so sometimes you don't notice it so much, but, yeah, it feels good. 

Are you surprised at how well "Country Grammar'' has been received? 

Yeah, well, we were just hoping if we could get it out nationwide, people would catch on to it. The problem was getting nationwide distribution, as far as being from St. Louis and stuff. 

What makes the St. Louis sound different from hip-hop from other parts of the country? 

It's just St. Louis in general. We're probably the only ones that are there, smack in the middle of the states, so to speak. When it comes to music, we get influences from all over. You probably know how the South is gonna sound, how the East is gonna sound, how the West ... But when you're dealing with St. Louis and Missouri, you don't know how it's gonna turn out. People here are getting influences from all over. Some out of St. Louis got more of a West Coast sound. Some have a more East Coast or more of a South sound. It's so diverse and so wide open. We're right here, man; we never had anything to call our own. 

Is "Country Grammar" indicative of how the rest of the St. Lunatics sound? 

Nah. Everybody sounds different than Nelly. Everyone in the Lunatics got their own sound -- I don't sound like Ali; I don't sound like Murph; and Murph don't sound like Kyjuan. Everybody brings something to the group. You gotta remember; this all didn't just happen. We've been doing this a long time. 

The word is you were a pretty good baseball player. Could you have gone pro? 

Yeah. I didn't get into St. Louis amateur baseball till I was out of high school. That's when I played that. I've been to camps, the Braves, and stuff like that. Got a lot of letters from teams and people like that. But there are other influences that take you out of stuff. I got distracted from the ball. Rap didn't discourage me from playing ball, though. 

Why did you choose hip-hop? 

I'm a child of hip-hop. It's just a way of life. It's like, "Well, how did you get into living?'' It's there. How did I get into rapping? 'Cause I was always listening to hip-hop. There's just, like, so many influences, man. If I was West Coast, I could say "OK, N.W.A, Dr. Dre, and them.'' If I was on the East Coast I could be like, "OK, Run DMC, Erik B ...'' I'm in the middle, so my influences come from all over the place. 

What are you talking about in "Country Grammar"? 

It's St. Louis. It's just the feel. It's just, you know, hot shit; you just got to know something you put in your corner, and it's your best. It's your hot shit. 

How did you decide to use the nursery rhyme for the basis of the song? 

It's just something I hear forever. You've got a lot of kids playing in the street, kids out all day in St. Louis. You got kids who don't go in the house in the summertime. I heard it when I was real little, and it's something my nieces and nephews do now. It was just something that popped in my head when I heard the beat; [sings] "Down down, baby ...'' It's just the feel. 

Do you have a particular method for creating your songs? 

Nah. I just hear the beat and what comes natural, or if I've got an idea in my head or something I really want to write about. I try to get inside the beat -- not on top, not underneath, but inside the beat. I fight it; I try to get in it so you flow with beat. You get a lot of artists that rap on top of the beat, that never change their style; they sound the same way rapping on each beat. That's fine if that's what they want to do, but it's not for me. 

What were your first songs like? 

Our first songs were like, they sounded like first songs. To us they were hot; anybody who does their own music thinks their shit is hot, don't they? But we weren't ready yet. We had a guy in town named Big Lee; he did this before, not like on a large scale, but he was in the music thing and was already experienced as far as being out of town, out of stage. We had been rapping for the hood, just in St. Louis. like four niggas rapping on the corner. When Big Lee came back, he's like, "Yo, there's a bigger picture. We need to do it like this.'' 

What did you have to learn? 

Well, we all had skills. It was just about how to sell it, basically; a lot of rappers out there think that just 'cause they're boys, it's gonna sell. That ain't it. It's about learning the game more as a whole. It's a process. We started out in '93, '94, and we're just now getting our chance. All that time before; it's been like practice, all that time we thought we were ready, prematurely, and we weren't. Now we're coming hard. 


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