Nelly Tells Kelly Clarkson How He Successfully Fuses Hip-Hop And Country Music [VIDEO]
NBC Nelly is fresh off of competing on Dancing With The Stars and is stepping right back into the music scene. He is one of the only artists in the world who has successfully been able to mix country music with his authentic hip-hop sound. He even struck up a great relationship with some of the biggest artists in country music today. He spoke about this achievement on The Kelly Clarkson Show.
Hip-Hop Artist Nelly Has Successfully Crossed Over To Country Music
Nelly first met popular country duo Florida Georgia Line when he was asked to do the remix of their single “Cruise” in 2013. The song was a major success and it peaked at No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. “Cruise” is the best-selling digital country single of all time and was certified Diamond in 2016.
“Fortunately enough I did it and we kind of made history coming together with ‘Cruise’ and we bonded right off the gate with that” Nelly said. He released another song with the duo in October called “Lil Bit” which is the first single off of Nelly’s new EP called Heartland.
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“We bonded and we did like two tours together and they’re family now and we’ve been together ever since as far as communicating and keeping in contact…so when I started working on this project we came up with this idea and it was pretty special” he continued. Nelly’s new EP is coming out at the beginning of 2021.
He Was One Of The First Artists To Crossover With The Two Different Genres
Kelly Clarkson pointed out that Nelly was the “pioneer” of crossing over into country music. She remembers one of the first times she heard a country and hip-hop collaboration which was Nelly and Tim McGraw. In 2004 Nelly and Tim released a song called “Over And Over.” They broke boundaries with this collaboration that topped global charts and earned critical acclaim.
“My uncle is the one that got me into music and he was a huge Lionel Richie fan and Lionel used to do a lot of writing and he wrote for Kenny Rogers and he wrote for a lot of different people” Nelly continued. This is how his love for country and R&B music started. He called country music “one of the purest art forms that still exists to this day.”
The Voice coach agreed that country music is a pure art form. She said that country is a lot like R&B music in some ways because it is all about storytelling. “A lot of the songs that are traditional R&B hits have also been transformed into country music” Nelly added. The pair continued to talk about how artists like Whitney Houston and Dolly Parton fused the two genres together. They were bothsuper successful with the song “I Will Always Love You.”
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“Just the love, passion and the honesty in the music I think resonated with me” the Dancing With The Stars third place finisher added about country music.
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