Hip-Hop Prodigy Chris Brown Likes the Cardinals; Leave Nelly a Voicemail

The other day, Ian pointed out that hip-hop wunderkind Chris Brown is sporting a Cardinals hat in his video for the song "Kiss Kiss" (which also features T-Pain; he doesn't want to buy Brown a drink, but the vocoder-laden voice is firmly in place). In a time where some locally tied rappers -- cough, Chingy -- are adopting different hometowns (Atlanta) and others have albums with questionable release dates (Nelly's Brass Knuckles is now coming in the vague "Winter '07"), it's nice to see some STL colors represent.

There's also a remix featuring Nelly out there; perhaps his Lou pride rubbed off on Young Brown.

Speaking of Nelly, perusing his Web site lead me to wadsyaname.net, which encourages people to leave their best/worst pick-up lines. Awesome.

And even better? You can give Nelly a ring at 314-735-0444. Leave him a message. He wants to hear from you, and you'll get to hear him call you "li'l dirty." (And if you don't get the menu during the call, press "9" to hear him say "all that shit" again.)

The pernicious thing about the call is that if you use a cellphone (like I did) to call, it automatically texts you an invite (from Nelly, of course) to join the Nelly Mob on Mozes.com, a site that appears to be a text-messaging hub of information for bands and groups of friends. The phrase "Std. rates apply" seems ominous; but that just means if you don't have unlimited texts, it costs money to get messages from your favorite stars.

-- Annie Zaleski