When rapper and singer Nelly first found success, he wanted to share it with his mother.
Nelly, whose given name is Cornell Iral Haynes Jr., was born in Austin, TX, but raised in St. Louis, MO. He adopted a “hustler” mentality as a teenager from witnessing his mother balance jobs in the fast food industry, he shared during an interview on “The Shop” podcast. He revealed his mother, Rhonda Mack, helped him secure his first job at a food truck when he was 14 years old while she worked as a manager at the McDonald’s in Clayton, MO. At the time, Nelly was saving up to attend his high school’s homecoming.
“She said, ‘Yo, I can’t give you a real job, but on the weekends they got a truck… She said, ‘I can give you a job there.’ I said, ‘Oh, I’ll take it.’ And the owner would pay me $25… I wound up getting about $140 by the time homecoming came,” Nelly recalled on “The Shop.”
In high school, Nelly also found a position at McDonald’s by working at the grill, he told Access Hollywood. His journey in the fast food industry, as well as his mother’s, would reach a standstill for good reasons. Nelly’s uncle introduced him to music at a young age. Additionally, his uncle was a fan of singer-songwriter Lionel Richie, who wrote hits for various individuals in music, including country artist Kenny Rogers. Listening to music by both artists would spark Nelly’s “love affair” with music, including his foray into the country genre, he mentioned on the Kelly Clarkson Show.
In 1993, Nelly joined Ali Jones, Murphy Lee, City Spud, Kyjuan, and Slo’Down to form the St. Louis-based rap group St. Lunatics, Complex reports.
In 1999, Nelly would step out as a solo artist and find incredible success with his breakthrough 2000 album, “Country Grammar.” What’s more, it is still widely successful today. The year of its release, the album earned the top spot on the Billboard 200, per Forbes. Since then, Nelly has sold more than 21 million albums of all his music, according to Complex.
At the time of Nelly’s solo entry into the industry amid the success of his debut album, the first person on his mind was his mother. He pulled into the drive-thru of her workplace during her shift and told her she could quit her job in fast food after having dedicated over three decades to the sector, per Access Hollywood.
“I didn’t tell her I was coming, and I just drove through the drive-thru, and I pulled up to the window, and she was like, ‘Hey.’ She didn’t know I was coming. And I was like, ‘You should come with me. You can quit.’ And that was basically the best memory that I had, was being able to pull up to her job and tell her she doesn’t have to work there anymore,” Nelly shared with the outlet.
He concluded, “My mom had worked in fast food for over 30 years, and it was kind of rough if you ever worked in fast food, which I worked at McDonald’s all through high school and things like that, so I knew it could be very taxing, but she did it for over 30 years. Sometimes, she worked two jobs at once, and that was very rewarding for myself to be able to do that for her.”
