If you wanna go and take a ride with me to low albums with no ranks and no closings, oh why did this happen to meeeee...heyyyyyy I aint got no monayyy!

Unfortunately, this is our remix of "Ride with Me," a song which had signified Louisville's own country rap star Nelly's rise in the music indstry, and is now emblematic of...his demise. His latest album did not do well in the markets, barely coming in at 56 thousand units sold across outlets, and Nelly blames his label for everything. Points of interest in album disappointment?:

Lack of Marketing
Think about it. In today's entertainment market, which is essentially powered by heightened technology, Limewire, Frostwire and other file sharing mediums, noone wants to go out to the store to purchase their fave artists' albums. That's of the past. To supplement this deficit, an artist must have a capable marketing crew to position their client - Nelly- correctly in the market- this means being more creative and artistic with the marketing plans for efficient information syndication. The public doesn't just want to see random TV Ads promoting your album. We see them everyday.

*Capitalize on social media by popping up at the actual headquarters like Kanye did at Facebook Inc in California. Instead, land your country behind at Twitter. Purchase a media plan for TV networks airing championing sports, like the recent Thanksgiving day football fiasco. ADs are more memorable when they are attached to activities, and/or events with earth-shattering momentum.

*Create a contest way in advance, for aspiring models across the United States, to land a cameo in your next video. Utilize banners on tour buses while traveling from state to state. Don't fly to where you wanna go. Instead be the average person and travel old-fashioned style: ON THE FLIPPIN ROAD! This maximizes your promotional potential.

*Speaking of promotions, why didn't we see Nelly in the NYC hosting parties? Promoters are definitely important.

*Speaking of promoters, why didn't we see Nelly doing "hey, how ya doing," visits at college campuses in the US. See, proper planning means proper banking. It's not that difficult to contact the Offices of Campus Life at colleges and universities of your preference to book an appearance. It's not all about the fancy ballroom shows, award show appearances or whatever foolywang else comprises of high-end entertainment.It's about bringing yourself down from the celeb stratosphere, and being relatable to your darn fans. Nelly's marketing team has neglected that component in their campaigning initiatives, (if they orchestrated any at all and at this rate, I highly doubt it.) You have to convince the biggest and wildest money spenders to go out and buy your album. Best thing to do is to employ this principle " Be where the bees are, you'll get more honey, go to college campuses, you'll get more money."

Lack of PR
No matter how much people try to downsize the role and responsibility of a publicist, the proof of their importance is in the pudding. You can tell when there is a lack of PR as it relates to an artist's strife for reignited relevance- case in point Nelly. We didn't see Nelly appear on TV that much. 106 & Park doesn't count either. Why wasn't he on The View? Why wasn't there a publicity stunt executed to further propel TV ADs for his song "Just a Dream?" Maybe a new love interest would have perfectly complemented the buzz worthiness of his album's single. WHO KNOWS! The creative options are endless when it comes to PR and Nelly's administrative camp was just not on that level.

In any case, we caught up with YBF.com to gain some insight into why Nelly blamed his record label for his musical failures. The rapper tweeted, "A record deal is a 50/50 partnership!As a artist its your job to provide the record company with music that they(record company) can sell,Thing about the partnership is that n the public eye the responsibility is not 50/50!the artist is always the 1who catches 90% of the blame."

He continued tweeting saying, "If u only ship 200 thound [thousand] of an album how many are u f#cking tryen [sic] to sell?? the artist does control that nor does he or she control marketing."

So our thoughts surely reflect Nelly's sentiments. What's your take? Is it the label's error that Nelly did strikingly bad in the market? Or have people moved past the dirty south, country grammar phase and  found residence in a minimalist, HipHop/Pop realm? wink wink MBDTF???