When Nelly calls, he's just finished up a poker tournament in Florida, and it's left a bit of a bad taste in his mouth. "I should've fuckin' folded," he says, rueing the moment lost. "I don't know why I just let this guy walk me around. I had pocket 7's, the board was low, highest thing on the board was an 8, but I fucked around and let him turn on the Jack."

It's a rare mistake for the big Midwestern rapper who put St. Louis on the map with his debut album Country Grammar in 2000. This year, Nelly is slowly but steadily re-emerging as both a musical and cultural touchstone, topping the Country charts for 17 straight weeks with his remix of Florida-Georgia Line's "Cruise," then following that up in July with the single and video for "Get Like Me" featuring Pharrell and Nicki Minaj, which is the first offering from his upcoming seventh solo LP M.O., his first since 2010's 5.0.

But while he's crossing over into the mainstream on the music charts, he's been building his brand with partnership deals with Mike And Ikes (a radio spot earlier this year where he brought the estranged friends back together for the good of the candy) and a fantastically bizarre campaign to get Honey Nut Cheerios' mascot Buzz the Bee some swag, the latter of which will be a continued partnership with General Mills which will last at least a year and a half.

"Everybody knows Tony the Tiger, but nobody really knows the personality of Buzz, and GM wanted to make him cool," said Roe Williams, senior vice president of strategic partnerships at KWL Management, who helped set up the Cheerios deal with Nelly. "[Nelly]'s transcending into this mainstream pop artist rather than this urban-only artist, and Honey Nut Cheerios is the number one cereal in the country. It was Nelly's idea to say, 'Why does he have a wand? He looks stupid with this wand, he's never gonna get any girls with this wand'—he's an artist who is at the pulse of pop culture who is able to say and do things as a de-facto creative director for a company that allows them to really engage him in the most authentic way."

Nelly, for his part, has been eating Mike and Ikes (they're on his rider) and Honey Nut Cheerios (his favorite cereal) for years, and was able to get his ideas across, particularly with the Cheerios promotion. "We kinda ran with my ideas," he said of their creative meetings. "[We used some] of their ideas, 'cause they are General Mills so they gotta protect their brand, can't just let a rapper control the asylum all the way. [Laughs] We found a great common ground."

With his new album slated for the end of September and a rapidly-rising presence in the mainstream, Nelly is back and ready to take over the collective consciousness in the same way he capture the world in the 2000s. He spoke to XXL about Cheerios, the relationship between country music and hip-hop, working with Pharrell and why it can be tough to move forward. —Dan Rys (@danrys)

That song you did with Florida-Georgia Line was huge.
We're on the same label [Universal Republic], and the president of the label Monte Lipman, he's been there since I've been there. We're real cool, so Monte can call me and ask me anything, basically. He called me and he had an idea that he thought would be dope if I could put a little twist on it, he thought it could possibly fly, have the potential to crossover. Him and a lot of people at the label thought it could cross over if it had the right twist on it. They didn't change anything, it's the same song; we just re-did the beat, I added in my vocals and it went.

Country and R&B—it's more or less the stories. One thing about country music and hip-hop, it comes from the every day life of that element. The majority of country music comes from good, hard-working music from around their neighborhoods, and a lot of hip-hop and R&B music comes about the same way—even though we all have dreams about different stuff, we still dream. A lot of that music is almost the same thing; when you're poor, you wanna have it, and when you're not singing or rapping about how to get it, you're rapping or singing about how things are. Country and rap music are basically the same thing, man, just switch the beat around and shit almost sounds exactly alike. [Laughs] It's all about the storytelling.

Tell me about your new album that's coming out.
The album is pretty dope. It's called M.O. The single we just released with Nicki Minaj and my man Pharrell—actually Pharrell did about four tracks—I worked with a producer by the name of Detail who produced two or three tracks on there, Rico Love produced the Florida-Georgia Line track for my album which is pretty dope. I got the first ever Nelly and Nelly Furtado collaboration. It's a Nelly album, you know what I'm saying? It might not be the Nelly album that people...People always get a feel of how they want their artist to be. They want their artist to stay in a time. You want Michael Jackson to keep making Thriller. [Laughs] How the hell could he make Thriller again? People don't understand, music—it's not a blueprint, it's an art. It's a feeling. It's a little bit different, and that's what makes those albums special, because of when they were. It's almost like asking you to be the same way you were 14 years ago. [Laughs] Why don't you dress the same way you did 14 years ago? Are you kidding me? [Laughs]

Is it tough to keep pushing forward while everybody keeps talking about Country Grammar?
It's tough when they don't allow you, when people are unfair about it and they hold you to a standard of it that they don't even hold themselves. It's not really fair. Because again, it's like asking you why don't you do what you did 20 years ago, or 15 years ago. It's like, do you know the state of mind I was in? Somebody said, you get your whole life to make your first album, you only get a year to make the second. In that aspect, I would love for Jay Z to make another Blueprint. I would love him to make another Reasonable Doubt. How can he do that? But then if he did do that, wouldn't it take away from Reasonable Doubt being Reasonable Doubt? Wouldn't it take away from The Blueprint being The Blueprint? Those moments are etched in time for all of us.

I think what people are forgetting, as dope an album as Country Grammar was, it was a lot of what went into the album that came into play. I can't be from St. Louis again. I can't re-introduce myself again. You already know who I am! [Laughs] You can't go back to high school or to middle school when that shit came out and get that feeling again. There's no fuckin' way.

But in naming the album M.O. you're sort of bringing it back to that Missouri thing again.
Well not bringing it back, but Mo, a lot of friends and family call me Mo for short. So it's just about me being me at all times and representing where I'm from at all times. I'm not re-introducing St. Louis—Country Grammar introduced St. Louis to the world. I'm not introducing St. Louis to the world anymore, I'm just representing where I'm from. So it's a little different.

What was it like working with Pharrell?
Working with Pharrell is always great, I've worked with him on every album except for Country Grammar, everything from "Hot In Herre," "Flap Your Wings," did a bunch of other joints with him too as well. Pharrell is a huge part of Nelly, definitely. He's doing his thing right now—that's what super producers do. When you have a real ear for music, and you're not just making beats, and your beats are not in the moment, but they're great beats—I shouldn't even call them beats, when he's making instrumentals it's a little different. You have a lot of beat-makers, and then you have producers. He's a real producer. He gets the vibe, he understands music. And that's what's wrong with a lot of, not just producers, but artists today. They don't understand the history of music. They don't have a history of music. They have a history of rap, but they don't have a history of music. If they're not implementing music into what it is what they're doing, that's why a lot of it sounds the same.

What's life like now as opposed to when Country Grammar came out?
It just is what it is—it's not anything that you're not comfortable with, it just is what it is. You pretty much get used to it, but you definitely appreciate it, because you know that it don't have to be. This don't have to be, it could leave any day, so you gotta make sure that you're pretty cool with that.

What happened with that pitch at the St. Louis Cardinals game?
He called a pitch-out, you didn't see that? You guys are killin' me here. I played baseball, don't mean I was a pitcher! [Laughs] It's not like they gave me warmups or anything, they just put me on the mound—I haven't stepped on a mound in like 20 years. [Laughs]

So you feel like they should've let you get a bullpen session in first?
I mean, the least they coulda done was gave a brother a couple of tosses, you know what I'm saying? They put me out on the mound and told me to go for it.

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