Songfacts®:

• St. Lunatics' most famous member is Nelly. The group formed in 1996 and started shopping for a record deal after issuing a single called "Gimmie What U Got" independently. A rep from Universal Music eventually took notice and signed the group, but peeled off Nelly as a solo act. Nelly's debut album, Country Grammar, was released in 2000 and was huge. His fellow St. Lunatics featured on it, and they remained close.
  
  In 2001, Universal issued the first St. Lunatics album, Free City, with "Midwest Swing" as the lead single. The song was a modest hit, reaching #88 in the US, but the album ended up going Platinum for selling a million copies.
• The song is all about life in St. Louis, where the group is from. There wasn't much hip-hop coming out of the Midwest at the time, so they could define it with their own groove, which was more relaxed and fluid than what was coming out of the cities.
• Nelly and his fellow St. Lunatics Murphy Lee, Kyjuan, and Ali each take a verse on this song and are credited as writers along with the track's producer, Jason Epperson, who was also at the controls for Nelly's debut single, "Country Grammar (Hot S--t)."
  
  The fifth member of the group, City Spud, doesn't appear on the track because he was sent to jail for armed robbery in 1999. The album is titled Free City in tribute. He appears on just one track: "Groovin Tonight."
• St. Lunatics weren't the only group to follow their superstar rapper to success in 2001. Eminem's group D12 released their debut album, Devil's Night, that year, and it also sold a million copies in the US.