Bow Wow's Bark & Bite - rap singer

Ebony, April, 2001 by Kevin Chappell

Rapper called hottest young heartthrob in decades

THE managers at a large New York City department store thought they had it all figured out when they asked Lil' Bow Wow to make an in-store appearance. There would be lots of starryeyed little girls, all nervously giggling with one another as they patiently waited for the kid rapper to sign their CD covers. If anyone got out of line, the same sales clerks--who had formed part of the store's security force during a previous appearance by 'N Sync --would step in to restore order.

It wasn't until one of the girls cried out, "Oh, Lord, why did you have to make Bow Wow so fine?" and another screamed, "Bow Wow, will you be my baby's daddy?" that the store management realized that they had made two miscalculations. First, Bow Wow wasn't 'N Sync, and second, these little girls weren't simply experiencing a mild case of puppy love.

"They tore that store up. There were girls everywhere. There were clothes everywhere," recalls Bow Wows mother, Teresa Caldwell. "No one really understood how much these little girls love him. They want to see him, and they were not going to sit there and be calm. They'll knock over the ropes. They'll tear down the gates. And nothing's going to stop them. These little girls are not playing around. The managers were like, `We didn't know how popular he was.'"

He is possibly the hottest child heartthrob in the last two decades. Perhaps not since Michael Jackson has a kid so young had a following so intense, so vehement that many times childhood naivete is kicked to the curb in favor of raw emotion. His cool demeanor, baby face, innocent smile and charming brown eyes keep girls across the country weak at the knees, their parents shaking their heads and his debut CD, Beware of Dog, flying off the record-store shelves. Two million copies have already been sold--with no signs of slowing down. And now Bow Wow (whose real name is Shad Moss) is headed to Europe in hopes of hitting it big overseas.

Few 13-year-old boys will ever know how it feels to need bodyguards to protect them from screaming girls. For Bow Wow, the sight of fans who refuse to let anything get between him and them is something he has grown accustomed to. "They just want to touch me. They ask for hugs. I give them hugs," Bow Wow says. "It feels great. I love my fans. All that stuff. I just laugh and have a good time with it."

A scene similar to the one in New York City played out again at a Chicago mall, where management was forced to shut down the entire mall when it was overrun by thousands of screaming girls. At a recent concert in Washington, D.C., 11-year-old Alexandra McIntyre explained her attraction to Bow Wow. "I think Lil' Bow Wow is the cutest boy on this whole Earth," she says. "His hair and his eyes. He's so cute. And he can sing really well."

At such a young age, Bow Wow admits that it's hard for him to really understand his popularity. "I don't have any idea how big I am," he says. "All I know is that I'm going in the right direction."

The right direction for him is to try to stay true to his hip-hop street roots, while at the same time staying true to his young audience. He describes his rap style as "not mellow, but not hard. It's somewhere in-between."

You won't find profanity in his songs, a fact that he is proud of, but a point of contention with some rap fans. "Some people ask me why I didn't put some cussing in my songs. They say my songs are soft because I'm not cussing in them," he says. "But the way I look at it, there's going to always be haters, and haters never get to me. I just ignore them. Haters get no love in my black book. I don't pay any attention to them."

In fact, hang out with Bow Wow long enough, and it becomes obvious that like--most energetic kids his age--he doesn't spend long dwelling on much of anything. At his modest home in Columbus, Ohio--far away from the glitz and fast-pace lifestyle most entertainers enjoy--Bow Wow appears to be like any other adolescent. His 10-foot-by-10-foot room is wallpapered with NBA posters. A dozen or so sneakers hang from a shoe rack behind his door. He has a twin-sized bed and a glass aquarium for his pet turtle Snoop. He likes to ride his go-cart, play basketball with his friends, and spend endless hours playing video games.

"My typical day goes something like this," says Bow Wow, who adds that he doesn't have a girlfriend yet. "Play games, talk on the phone, shower, eat, sleep. Play games, work, shower, eat, sleep. That's it. It repeats. It repeats. It repeats. It repeats. It repeats. Just like a pattern."

His mother says the new fame hasn't changed her son. "He's the same person," she says. "He might get bigger toys, but that's about it. He's a good kid. He has a big heart and a lot of energy. He will tire you out."

Bow Wow, his mother reveals, has always wanted to be a rapper. As a toddler, he looked up to rappers like NWA and Tupac Shakur, who, to this day, is still his favorite artist. When Bow Wow was 3, his mother recalls, Bow Wow would look at music videos and dance. "He's always rapped and mumbled stuff," she says. "He would grab whatever he could and use it as a microphone."