It may be down to the lavish lifestyle, but rappers and tax problems seem to pretty much go hand-in-hand of late.
The history dates all the way back to M.C. Hammer in the late '90s, up to the more recent issues with the likes of Snoop Dogg, Lauryn Hill, Busta Rhymes and Lil' Wayne (who owed $19 million in back taxes). Most have just been able to deal with the money issues, rapper Nelly was forced to declare bankruptcy off the back of his $2.4 million IRS debt.
In response, fans quickly mobilized to create the #SaveNelly campaign, with some high profile celebs backing the cause.
Spin.com got in contact with the folks at Spotify to find out if the campaign was having any real effect, and while Spotify informed that they cannot disclose specific streaming details without the artist's prior consent, they did announce that plays of Nelly's tracks had increased threefold within the last week.
They estimated that there would need to be between 300 and 400 million plays of Nelly's songs in order to pay off the IRS debt, but with the number of streams played increasing day on day, that may not be the impossible task it sounds like.
Lets just hope that if he does get his finances sorted, he doesn't make any silly mistakes, like that time he tried to use Excel to send Kelly Rowland a text message in one of his music videos...
