Nelly wants everyone to know he’s more than willing to change a diaper or two for the son he shares with Ashanti, especially after catching heat for comments he made earlier this year on their reality show.
During a recent conversation with DJ Envy on 96.1 The Beat, Nelly set the record straight and addressed the backlash surrounding his remarks.
“Let’s be clear. I have changed Pampers,” Nelly said with a laugh around the three-minute, 13-second mark. “Even when I made that statement, I had already changed Pampers. What I meant was, when you get to a certain age, certain things don’t really matter.”
He went on to say he finds it wild how much weight people put on diaper duty.
“The fact that people act like changing Pampers makes a difference in your life is, like, so amazing to me,” he said. “I’ve never seen anybody go to the moon because an astronaut changed their diapers.”
On an episode of Nelly & Ashanti: We Belong Together, Nelly revisited a private conversation he had with Ashanti about parenting before the cameras were on.
“I’m going to take you back to this conversation we had before you kicked me under the table,” Nelly recalled. “I said, ‘Baby, I’ll give you the world. I just ain’t changing no diaper.’”
By September, after facing backlash over his parenting comments, Nelly walked back the statement.
“Excuse me, I’ve always changed diapers,” he told People. “I think people took a joke and turned it into a whole debate.
“It was on our show, so if it didn’t land as a joke, then that’s on us,” he added. “But of course I’ve changed diapers. It was never about me refusing to do it. The conversation was more like, ‘I’ll do whatever needs to be done, but I’m also giving you the best help possible—with me and a 24-hour nanny.’ Everybody seems to forget that part.”
