I came.

I saw.

I bought the T-shirt.

How else would I sum up my Nappy Roots experience last Friday night?

For my first ever rap concert, I couldn’t decide what to wear.

I draw my rap knowledge from four albums: “Chronic 2001,” “Country Grammar,” “Nellyville” and Nappy’s own “Watermelon, Chicken and Gritz.” But outside of those four albums, I have little in the way of hip hop street credibility.

My problem was a lack of any real knowledge of how to dress. For this information, I turned to rap superstar Nelly.

No, I didn’t really talk to him. I doubt he would even give me a beat to dance to, let alone fashion advice. I really just turned on any one of his music videos or that commercial he did for ESPN where he wore a lot of sports jerseys in about 30 seconds.

I figured a backwards Marshall Faulk jersey and a St. Louis Rams sock cap would be the attire of choice for my evening. Nothing says “cool” like wearing the apparel of a football team that didn’t even win half its games.

I even thought that maybe, just maybe, I would buy a big silver letter “H” and put it on a chain as thick as a fire hose. But because my mom made my girlfriend swear to never let me go near a jewelry vendor while shopping at the mall, it never happened.

In reality, I didn’t even reach the level of style that a jersey and sock cap would bring because I didn’t want to get it dirty. That, and I would definitely be a poser.

I still had a good time at the concert… despite wearing my hooded sweatshirt. For some reason, 3 million plus people — I have the crowd estimation skills of a legally blind AARP member — and body heat just didn’t go together in my logic in choosing a sweatshirt.

I felt bad, but probably not as bad as rapper Haystack who weighs as much as my Civic. That’s a gross overestimation do to my equally mathematically-challenged weight approximation skills.

(If I worked at Six Flags during the summer, I would run the whole corporation out of business. My Guess-Your-Weight speculations would vary arbitrarily between “Shamu” and “22 rounded toothpicks.” There would be a national shortage of glow sticks and inflatable crayons that rip after kids wallop their parents with them.)

Watching Haystack perform and the crowds of adoring fans bumping at his feet, I wondered at what age does being overweight become cool?

It couldn’t be anytime before middle school, when I took swimming lessons the same summer Anheuser-Busch tragically debuted its sumo wrestler high diving advertisement. For me — during those two weeks of swimming lesson hell — being overweight was far from being hip. More like a psychological pain in the mound of flesh behind my hips.

I guess I shouldn’t be too worried.

How cool can a large rapper who is adored by the fans in Diddle be, one of whom was a 30-year-old man who danced with rhythmless chicken wing flaps and equally off beat hand waves? How smooth is the rapper who inspires college-aged girls to wave their arms in a rigidly-outstretched Nazi party fashion?

Probably smoother than me.

Pick O’ the Week

•Time for a word problem. What does an 18-and-up dance floor plus a fistful of plastic Mardi Gras beads multiplied by a $10 all-you-can-drink special equal? The Tropics on Saturday night.

Didn’t one of Hollan Holm’s pledges die? Well, yes, but he was very old. And I’m sure that once we get the autopsy report back, we’ll find [email protected] died of natural causes.