Album: Nelly

Sweat/Suit, UNIVERSAL

Two albums at once? Whoa, Nelly! But there's no need for fans to blindly purchase both, there being a vast gulf in quality between the club-oriented Sweat, and the more reflective, more adult Suit. The former is a routine collection of boasts about how many records Nelly has sold, how much money he has accumulated, how many cars are in his garage, and how many models he's rogered, the appeal of which soon wears thin. Suit is vastly superior, the Love Below to Sweat's Speakerboxxx - an apt comparison, given that Big Boi produces one track, and another relies heavily on an OutKast sample. Not only is "Pretty Toes" - the track in question - more engaging, in sheer dance-pop terms, than anything on Sweat, but Nelly also employs his rap skills with greater depth on tracks such as "Die For You" and "N Dey Say". In the former, he recalls his consternation at his daughter's premature birth, and how he felt that his lifestyle might have been at fault; the latter,

Two albums at once? Whoa, Nelly! But there's no need for fans to blindly purchase both, there being a vast gulf in quality between the club-oriented Sweat, and the more reflective, more adult Suit. The former is a routine collection of boasts about how many records Nelly has sold, how much money he has accumulated, how many cars are in his garage, and how many models he's rogered, the appeal of which soon wears thin. Suit is vastly superior, the Love Below to Sweat's Speakerboxxx - an apt comparison, given that Big Boi produces one track, and another relies heavily on an OutKast sample. Not only is "Pretty Toes" - the track in question - more engaging, in sheer dance-pop terms, than anything on Sweat, but Nelly also employs his rap skills with greater depth on tracks such as "Die For You" and "N Dey Say". In the former, he recalls his consternation at his daughter's premature birth, and how he felt that his lifestyle might have been at fault; the latter, built on the same Spandau Ballet sample once used by PM Dawn, offers support for single mothers, and brothers beaten down by circumstance. It contains the best couplet on both albums: "I used to think that life had a plan for me/ Until I realised life had to be planned by me."