Continuing the trend of reviewing winter releases by rappers past their primes, Nelly’s O.E.MO is coming under the microscope. Remember Nelly? He was probably the (second-) most popular rapper in the world in the pre-50 Cent portion of the 2000’s. “Country Grammar,” “Ride Wit Me,” “Hot In Herre,” and “Dilemma” were the soundtrack to middle school for America’s most recent and soon-to-be college graduates. But then, as most rappers do, Nelly lost some momentum until he’s reached the point he’s at now; barely relevant.

First off, I need to be up front and say that I had no idea what O.E.MO stood for. I googled it and it apparently stands for “On Everything MO,” and I’m guessing the MO stands for Nelly’s home state of Missouri. I still don’t know what it means, but sometimes the beauty of art is in the mystery. O.E.MO is also the first mixtape in the Nelly canon, and unfortunately he tries to make up for lost time by unconvincingly posturing as a gangster.

The tape’s intro, “On Errthang,” finds Nelly abandoning his trademark sing-song flow, with terrible results. His unimpressive flows (“you got you a model, well I got me a better bitch/She got a crib like yours, that’s a better bitch”) have a “is he being serious right now?” effect on the listener. If Nelly were in 8 Mile, he wouldn’t get destroyed by Eminem; he’d get destroyed by one of the guys who gets destroyed by Eminem.

Much of the rest of the tape finds Nelly taking other artists’ tracks and, if not making them worse, fails to make them any better. Songs that get the Nelly treatment include Machine Gun Kelly’s “Wild Boy,” Wale’s “Lotus Flower Bomb,” and Drake’s “The Motto.” In fairness, this last track isn’t as bad as the “official” remix featuring Tyga, which somehow ruins a great record while keeping its first two-thirds completely in tact.

No one has ever confused Nelly with a “hard” rapper, and up until this point nobody really had a problem with that. He thrived by writing catchy hooks about romance and partying during gangsta rap’s heyday. Ten years later, with hip-hop radio dominated by the likes of Kanye West, Drake and other decidedly un-gangsta rappers, it’s ironic and confusing that Nelly has decided to abandon his trademark formula which in theory should fit in now better than ever. Don’t get me wrong; after that first track misfire, his song-song flow is still prevalent and is the only thing that saves the tape from complete disaster (unlike say, the actual lyrics). But does O.E.MO get me hyped for Nelly’s next album? We’re gonna have to wait until he drops that first single to see if he’ll pull it together or if he’s completely gone off the rails.

2 / 5 bars

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.