Nelly’s music provided the summer anthems and prom soundtracks of the early-aughts, perhaps most memorably with bangers like “Hot in Herre” and “Ride Wit Me,” but it looks like the artist’s songs could also be the solution to his major financial woes.
Following unsubstantiated reports by TMZ that the Country Grammar rapper owes a large sum to the IRS, Spin came up with a clever way to rally behind him; writer Brian Josephs proposed that fans stream “Hot in Herre” at least a collective 287,176,547 times so that Nelly could earn a sizable Spotify payout.
According to the streaming service the payout for artists “per stream” averages between $0.006 and $0.0084, which means that if Nelly lands on the minimum end of the scale, he would need 402,880,500 streams to earn enough to significantly decrease the alleged debt.
This proposition inspired the hashtag #SaveNelly, with fans sharing the lengths they were willing to go to support Cornell. If anything, this tells us that the love for Nelly is still going strong.
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Write to Cady Lang at cady.lang@timemagazine.com