(Source MTV.com)

(www.NellyHQ.com)

MTV: Now the whole country's taken notice of you, but you're not a debut artist -- you've had other releases before.

Nelly: Yeah. For sure. I'm in The St. Lunatics, and we started underground back there in St. Louis in '94, and we managed to get something on the radio in '96, which did pretty well for us. It got us to number one, as far as the local station. Sold almost 10,000 [copies] out our truck, and then local record stores and stuff like that. It helped us get that foundation -- like St. Louis, the hometown -- and then get them behind us, like, "OK, they makin' some cool jams. They hot. All right. We gonna stay on this bandwagon," 'cause St. Louis is kind of funny like that. You're gonna have one hit locally, and then everything else, they're like, "Ah well, OK," and they're off your wagon. But they seem to be on the wagon and pushing it and pulling it and driving it, so it's all good for us.

MTV: Talk a little bit about that particular song, "Gimme What Ya Got."

Nelly: "Gimme What Ya Got" is a song by The St. Lunatics: me, my man Big Lee, Kyjuan, Murphy Lee, City Spud, my little brother -- he ain't with us right now, but we're gonna hold it down 'til he get out. Me and Big Lee [are] actually the two that rapped on the track. There was a whole Lunatics vibe, though, when we were in the studio making it, and it was just like a party jam. I came in the studio and Big Lee had already dropped two verses of the jam, and I came in and put the last verse on it, put a little twang to it, country grammar style, so to speak. Blew up the spot for us, locally. We did a little EP with that too.

MTV: How did The St. Lunatics get started?

Nelly: Well my man Big Lee's the oldest. He went away to college. And me, Kyjuan, and City Spud, my little brother, Murphy Lee, Kyjuan's little brother, we were back at home and, so to speak, rapping for the 'hood. My man Big Lee came home with a new outlook. He helped motivate us a little bit, like, "Yo, we should try to do it this way. We should try to listen to what St. Louis is doing. Just listen to the other groups and just differentiate ourselves from all that." That's what we did. We just took time and kept planting it, kept planting it, kept working in the studio for years in a row. I'm talking 'bout every day was a studio day. Even if we was just dropping by, grabbing a beat, or whatever, I [was in] the studio every day for three years. We just really pressed hard, man. It took hard work to get here.