During an appearance on "The Shop", Nelly made a claim that his era of hip hop was "the toughest" and I don't think he's wrong.
Even though Nelly saw some serious success in the 2000's, he told "The Shop" -
“Country Grammar sold five million and I didn’t even get nominated as Best New Artist! Because my album came out in 2000 so I wasn’t even on the ballot. In 2001, the great, talented, well-deserving Miss Alicia Keys won — and she should have won.”
The amount of talent that was putting out records when Nelly was blowing up was insane. Here's what he said about putting out records back then -
“When I put out songs, I had to go against DMX, JAY-Z, Eminem, Lil Wayne, 50 Cent, Luda. All of us are fighting for one spot! So from ’99 to 2008-2010, it’s the hardest era ever to get records.”
He threw in a slight diss to this new era of hip hop while he was in the chair as well -
“That’s also the difference between Hip Hop of back then and Hip Hop of today — they aren’t competitive enough against each other, I feel,” “I personally feel like when you get on a track with somebody, it’s supposed to be business.
Feature photo: Reuters
