Long before Drake or Lil’ Wayne were heard rapping and singing on a track, Nelly was already using the technique, delivering hits on hits on hits for the most part of the 00’s.
This week’s From The Vault pick is the veteran’s signature smash, ‘Hot In Herre‘
Produced by The Neptunes back in 2002, ‘Hot’ was the second offering from the artist’s sophomore album ‘Nellyville‘.
With its catchy chorus and various hooks, the tune was both Nelly and The Neptunes’s first of many a Billboard Hot 100 chart topper. It also reached the top spot of the Canadian charts and placed #4 in the UK. Alongside the Kelly Rowland-assisted ‘Dilemma’ – from the same album – it is considered Mr. Haynes’ signature track, and thanks to its sleek production never sounds out of date, to this day, when it’s party-o-clock.
It was with flying colors that director Little-X managed to translate the urgency of the lyrics into a fiery video taking place in a red hot kind of club where the ladies are anything but unhappy to oblige at the song’s request to take off their clothes. Although sportsmen Carmelo Anthony, TJ Duckett and Julius Peppers make brief but notable appearances during the clip, it is Cedric The Entertainer who steals the show with his now infamous “Roof Is On Fire” segment.
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With 2014 marking ‘Hot In Herre’’s 12th anniversary and the past few years in music focusing on “living for the moment”, you’d think a plethora of CLASSIC party-tunes would have emerged by now. Well from our vantage point there haven’t been that many jams that established themselves as club classics the way Nelly’s single did. The Black Eyed Peas’ ‘I Got a Feeling’, Rihanna’s ‘We Found Love’ and Usher’s ‘Yeah’ come to mind as contenders for that category, can you think of others?
What are the club-classics of the past decade?