Nelly was so devastated by the death of his sister in 2005, he took a long hiatus to grieve.

Jackie Donohue died from leukaemia at the age of 31, midway through Nelly's tour to promote 2004 double album 'Sweat/Suit'.

The singer had set up the Jes Us 4 Jackie campaign to find a bone marrow donor for his sister and to raise donation awareness - but a donor wasn't found in time for Donohue.

And the star admits the shock forced him to put his music career on the backburner - but now he's back and preparing to release new album Brass Knuckles.

Explaining why he waited so long between albums, he tells TheBoomBox.com: "I lost my sister in 2005 and that was like the worst thing that ever happened to me.

"So dealing with that took a whole, it took time. It took time. I didn't know how I was gonna deal with it. It never happened to me before, I didn't know, I didn't know how to react.

"I'm not really one who shows a lot of emotion on things like that. And then doing so, I was on tour when my sister passed. And when she did pass I went back on tour like two or three days after cause I couldn't just sit in the house.

“You know I was just there and some people was wondering what was wrong and I was like, 'Nothing's wrong, but I gotta do something.'"