Nelly Kim Furtado was born in Victoria, British Columbia on December 2nd 1978 to parents of Portuguese descent. Music has always surrounded Nelly, her mother sings in a choir, her father also enjoys singing and her great uncle was a famous marching band composer in Portugal. Nelly's first performance was at the age of four when she sang a duet with her mother. In childhood she learnt to play the ukulele and the trombone and she received her first tape recorder at the age of eight, which she used to record her own songs.

Nelly naturally bonded with other children of first generation heritage and was introduced to lots of different musical styles and influences. She grew up listening to hip hop and began writing her own rhymes etc, she names LL Cool J, Ice T and Salt n Pepa among her early influences as well as Prince, Mary J Blige and TLC. A little later she began to listen to bands like Radiohead, U2, Portishead and Oasis (in fact she famously wrote her first fan letter to Liam Gallagher).

At the age of 17 Nelly moved to Toronto and it was there, performing in a talent contest that she was spotted by her manager Chris Smith. He introduced her to Gerald Eaton and Brian West of the Philosopher Kings, a band he also managed, and they produced a demo tape for her. They were so impressed that they wanted to do some more demos but Nelly had other ideas and went ahead with her plans to go backpacking around Europe returning home again to study creative writing. She kept in touch with Gerald and Brian and they eventually - insisted - that she come back to Toronto to do some more work with them. She went for two weeks and the three of them worked on material that eventually led to Nelly being signed by Dreamworks Records, and, with Eaton and West (known as Track and Field) co-producing with her, Nelly continued to work on her debut album 'Whoa Nelly'.