Nelly Fans Are Mobilizing To Stream ‘Hot In Herre’ Enough Times To Pay Off The IRS

For years the IRS has been the celebrity’s arch nemesis. It seems like the IRS pops up every few weeks to point out some celebrity’s debt, cause a PR hit and then move along to ruin the next celebs day. They’re like the Independence Day aliens, crushing one celebrity’s world at a time.

The latest victim was Nelly, who reportedly owes the IRS over $2.4 million. Far removed from his heyday, the 41-year-old hasn’t released an album in three years but has maintained a presence on Billboard charts in the latter stages of his career, most recently with his inescapable, platinum hit “That Fix” featuring Jeremih and his debut album Country Grammar recently became just the eighth rap album ever to go diamond by crossing the 10 million records sold threshold.

Well, he’s either fallen on hard times, or fudged up his paperwork and the IRS is doing the IRS thing where they’re coming for their money no matter what. Instead of doing what the internet usually does — ragging on Nelly and meme-ing him into a trending topic and making people think he died — his fans have stepped up with the #SaveNelly movement.

According to Spin‘s calculations, the exact number of streams required to get the rapper out of debt is close to 300 million: 287,176,547 to be exact. That’s the best case scenario though, depending on Nelly’s royalty share of his streams, the total stream number could be as high as 402,880,500. But either way, his fans are doing their part, one stream at a time, to get the rapper out of debt. Judging by the way the internet has responded, this won’t take that long at all. With a little bit of uh, uh…

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