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Nelly was briefly one of the biggest names in hip-hop after experiencing a meteoric rise following the turn of the millennium, and while he’s obviously fallen off a bit since then, a video from a recent concert at the University of Florida really puts his decline in perspective.
There’s only so much musicians can do to stand the test of time, and there aren’t many rappers who were dominating the charts back when Nelly was a force to be reckoned with who are still coming close to doing the same in this day and age.
Nelly essentially put the St. Louis rap scene on the map when Country Grammar dropped in 2000, which featured a breakout single of the same name as well as the infectious “HEY, MUST BE THE MONEY!!!” refrain that helped “Ride Wit Me” achieve similar success.
His career arguably peaked when “Hot In Herre” took the world by storm a couple of years later, and while the man who managed to turn Band-Aids into a fashion statement continued to pump out music, he’d become a bit of an afterthought by the time the decade came to an end.
Nelly will be performing at a number of sizeable venues in the coming months while serving as the opening act on Janet Jackson’s summer tour, but it’s safe to assume he’s not the main draw for the vast majority of people who are buying tickets to those concerts.
It would also appear he wasn’t really a draw for the vast majority of students at the University of Florida who were given the chance to attend a free Nelly show at the Stephen C. O’Connell Center on April 9th, as a clip from that concert recently went viral courtesy of the almost nonexistent crowd that assembled inside the venue on a Tuesday night.
According to WUFT, the performance was originally slated to kick off at 7 P.M. but was pushed back an hour in the hopes more people would end up making their way through the doors. That didn’t end up being the case, and concertgoers who’d previously nabbed physical seats were invited to make their way to the floor before he took to the stage.
The low turnout doesn’t necessarily come as a huge shock when you consider most college kids weren’t even born when Nelly recorded his first hit, but it’s still a pretty sobering scene for anyone who remembers how huge he was at one point in time.