Yahoo Finance Nelly FINALLY Addresses Why Kelly Rowland Was Texting on Excel in the 2002 "Dilemma" Music Vid
There are a lot of 2000s music video staples - like low-rise pants, random choreographed arm dancing, and ALLLL the denim - that can be explained away by simply saying, "It was the 2000s!" But there is one music video moment that has gone unexplained for far too long that simply cannot be excused by the times.
You know what I'm talking about: WHY was Kelly Rowland texting using Microsoft Excel in the music video for Nelly's "Dilemma" back in 2002?
On the Australian talk show The Project, one host took Nelly to task about Kelly's odd use of Excel and Nelly attempted to explain.
"You know, that was the thing at the time!" Nelly responded, almost convincingly. "That was the new technology at the time! It looks a little dated now, yeah. I can see it."
Nelly, Nelly, Nelly... I know Kelly was repping the latest in Nokia, full-physical-keyboard-equipped flip phones in that vid, but we all know nobody texted using Microsoft Excel - even in 2002! Nice try, though.
Kelly did give a more believable explaination for Excel-gate to BuzzFeed earlier this year. "OK, I can't explain this picture," she offered. "I was given this phone - we probably got some extra perks for having this phone in the video, y'all know how that works by now. And basically, I don't know why they had this. I don't know why that screen is like this. I'm sorry I can't give you a really good answer. Yeah, I have no idea."
Definitely a more honest answer, though not at all satisfying. Which is why I decided to dig a little deeper. After a quick Google search, I discovered in the archives of the Internet that the phone Kelly shows off in "Dilemma" is a Nokia 9290 Communicator. And although it HAD a messaging app, one of its main apps listed on its ancient web page was - you guessed it - spreadsheets!
So I can only assume that featuring the Nokia phone was a form of product placement. But messaging had been around for a while, so the producers probably decided that showing off the phone's cool, cutting edge spreadsheet feature would be much cooler. Only thing is it just confused everybody BECAUSE YOU CAN'T TEXT WITH EXCEL.
Basically, 2002 played Nelly and Kelly so hard. They'll forever be the couple that got mad at each other for not getting a text back on Excel.
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