Hip hop's biggest ladies man

Nelly

For a guy who once said, "What good is all the fame if you ain't [expletive] the models?" Nelly is surprisingly charming.

On the phone, his speaking voice is softer and higher than the drill sergeant holler he puts on for Hot in Herre or Ride Wit Me. He laughs sheepishly, showing off the little Japanese he has learnt for his tour there with Akon.

"Arigato," he offers. "You know 'thank you' if you don't know nuttin' else."

Especially if they're young, female Japanese fans bringing you gifts after the show. He reckons about 70 per cent of his fans are females. "I'm not complaining. I'm not even trying to really rattle my brain and explain it, I'm just happy that it is the way it is."

His new album Sweat Suit (which was released as two separate albums overseas), looks unlikely to upset the status quo. Full of the chat-up rhymes we've come to expect, and a poster of Nelly in his singlet and bling finery, it smacks of Nelly's two biggest selling points: cash and sex appeal.

"If you chillin' witcha girl and all that, you know you might wanna pop the Suit in, and if you ridin' witcha fellas you might wanna pop the Sweat in."

On Flap Your Wings he teams up with Pharrell for some lusty appreciation of "girls with skinny waists to girls heavy-set, to the girls with extensions to the girls to dreads", while a synth rises like soaring blood pressure in the background. Pretty Toes pays tribute to "fly girls, country girls, city girls, sexy girls, pretty girls".

Then there's My Place, a smooth invitation back to Nelly's pad and She Don't Know My Name with Snoop Dogg, which, despite the title, gets its freak on more than all of the above put together.

As for how things pan out once he's attracted said subject matter, Nelly's not about to blow his own trumpet. He has the ambiguous catchphrase, "Drop down and get your eagle on, girl" to do it for him.

"I think every guy would love to stroke his own ego to a certain degree but all I do is try, man. I've never really had any problems with the ladies before I was Nelly. I did pretty decent, I did all right."

There's little room in Nelly's burgeoning empire for a girlfriend anyway. Twin albums aside, he's also CEO of his own label, Derrty Entertainment, a venture with Universal Records that has seen success with the release of his remix album and Murphy Lee's platinum solo debut, Murphy's Law. Then there's his energy drink, Pimp Juice, his two clothing labels, Apple Bottoms and Vokal and two not-for-profit organisations, 4 Sho 4 Kids (a literacy programme to help educate underprivileged children) and Jes Us 4 for Jackie (where he helps to find bone marrow donors).

He's dating, he says after some hesitation, but the only female he's truly committed to is his 11-year-old daughter. He spent Thanksgiving with her and his 6-year-old son, "popping fireworks, swimming, barbecuing and playing basketball".

The rest of the time, it's easy to imagine Nelly's life is like the video for Work It, one long champagne-fuelled party at Hugh Hefner's mansion.

"Oh I don't think so. My life is full of work, sweetheart. Right now, I been doin' a lot of shows, I'll probably go to one or two meetings a day, if not in person, then definitely over the phone."

Black Eyed Peas aside, Nelly is the biggest hip-hop star in pop music.

Confirming his cross-over appeal isn't just music-related, he gained favourable reviews for his role in the remake of Burt Reynolds' The Longest Yard opposite Adam Sandler and Chris Rock, and wrote the film's music.

He dismisses the idea that all these side projects are symptoms of your typical egotistical hip-hop star, and says, rather earnestly, that it's about keeping busy and reaching goals.

Over the course of his five-year career, Nelly's goals have amassed the kind of wealth that will buy you private jets, yachts and enough diamonds to feed a third-world country for a year.

His first album, Country Grammar sold 10 million, its follow-up Nellyville, which earned him two Grammy Awards for Hot in Herre and Dilemma, almost the same. But he insists it's success he craves, not money. What ticks him off most are people who don't get things done.

"I just go as I feel, sweetheart; it's life for me. I'm not looking at the clock when I do things, I'm just doing 'em.

"I'm not the most perfect businessman in the world but it takes work. You gotta have the initiative and the drive and I think that must come naturally. To learn the business, that's come-as-you-go. I'm not a college graduate, I didn't study in a particular element or anything like that. You just have to have the drive and determination to not wanna lose."

Born in 1978 to a military dad and fast food-selling mum, he moved to St Louis when they divorced. He was an angry kid, expelled from four of the eight schools he attended, and has said that his upbeat party music is an antidote to the life he knew: a gangster cliche where his friends were either hustling, going to jail or fighting.

When his "little brother" City Spud was locked up for armed robbery he took to wearing the infamous plaster on his cheek, a sign of support he abandoned when too many people picked up on its significance.

Through it all, his family have stuck by him, and by family he means his hip-hop crew, St Lunatics, also coming to New Zealand for the tour. Without them, he says he would not have coped when his sister and close friend Jackie died in March after a long battle with leukemia.

"It's hard. The same people I had around me in my St Lunatics family, the same group of guys I started with, they're the same guys I'm around now and it makes it a lot easier because everybody is in it for the same purpose. We all look out for each other. It's genuine like that."

Yet for his string of mainstream hits, collaborations with the Neptunes, Justin Timberlake and Destiny's Child member Kelly Rowland, Nelly has come up against criticism that his hip-hop cache with its money-drenched extras is anything but genuine. His audience is younger and more pop-oriented than most hip-hop artists would aspire to.

"We're not Usher, sweetheart, y'know what I'm sayin? You not coming to a rap concert and seeing a guy run back and change five, six, seven different times, nutthin like that. You're not going to see a big boom, y'know, we're hip-hop, y'know what I'm sayin?

"I've appreciated the success that we've been able to have outside of the regular hip-hop fans but contrary to rumour, I'm not the particularly pop-act show that you might see with thousands of dancers and fireworks and all that. That's more like Usher and Britney Spears and Justin.

"You walk a fine line, y'know what I'm saying? Because I love hip-hop; hip-hop is what I am."

Lowdown

Who: Nelly, aka Cornell "Nelly" Haynes Jr.
Releases: Country Grammar (2000), Nellyville (2002), Da Derrty Versions: The Reinvention (2003), Sweat Suit (2005). Sold close to 30 million copies of his singles/albums worldwide.
Family: Member of the hip-hop crew St. Lunatics with Ali, Murphy Lee, Kyjuan and Slo Down, who released the platinum-selling Free City (2001). Won a Grammy for his collaboration with Murphy Lee and P. Diddy for Shake Ya Tailfeather.
Trivia: He's a sports freak who almost became a professional basketball player. Has performed at Superbowls, maintains an interest in a Nascar team and is part-owner of NBA team, the Charlotte Bobcats.
See him live: Supertop, Ericsson Stadium, Auckland, July 28 with Akon, St Lunatics, Savage, Fast Crew, Player Park and DJ Logikal.