(Source: mtv.com)

(www.NellyHQ.com)

MTV: You haven't always lived in St. Louis. Tell us about your background.

Nelly: I was born in Texas. I was always moving around. It wasn't like I stayed in one spot for too long. I've been to, like, eight different schools. Four of them, I kind of got booted out a little bit. Another four came from just moving around, switching different families. [I've] always been kind of on my own, but not on my own. It helped me to rely on myself a lot. I talked to myself a lot -- you know, I ain't crazy or nothing -- but kind of like, "All right, Nelly, what was really going on?" I gotta sit back and talk to myself and reflect, 'cause I kind of feel like that's all I got. But I love my mom, my father. I got family behind me. Support, no doubt. But it's just some things you like to talk to yourself about, that you just can't [tell] other people. That's what I do. When I moved around a lot, moving from Texas to Spain... I don't really remember too much about Spain. I probably remember one thing. Like "uno, dos," that's probably about it. But I was real young. Then we moved to St. Louis, and then my parents got divorced. I was kind of split between them families like that, and then moving around amongst friends and family, and I was just always on the go. It reflects in my music too, [in] the way I like to do different styles and come off on different songs. It's like the different moods I was in. It's like life, you know? It's the way I was feeling at a young age.