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Small But Fierce
11/24/2000 9:00 PM, Yahoo! Music
Vic Everett
The first child music star to stay up past his bedtime was little Michael Jackson. Now, 30 years later, a young rapper named Lil' Bow Wow is heir to the King Of Pop's throne. With his out-of-the-box hit "Bounce With Me"--from his debut, Beware Of Dog (So So Def)--the youngster proves he just might be the newest prince of hip-hop. All hail the prince, indeed.
He certainly already has the ambition and drive of a superstar. He claims he worked on his album nonstop for more than eight hours each day, for weeks on end. "I went in there, recorded it, and tried to get out [of the studio] as quickly as possible," he says of his first single. "Next thing you know, a couple of months later, we did the album, and we were finished. It took three months to finish the album."
But don't worry about how Lil' Bow Wow pushed the limits of federal child labor laws--he insists that he truly enjoyed the work. After all, it was the first job he'd ever held. While most 13-year-olds were anxiously waiting for the day that they're old enough to ask if you want fries with that, Lil' Bow Wow was hard at work inside a multimillion-dollar recording studio.
Actually, to say that Lil' Bow Wow is a vet in the rap game wouldn't be much of an exaggeration. Seven long years ago, he made his first stage appearance on Dr. Dre's The Chronic tour, and he impressed tourmate Snoop Dogg with talent well beyond his 6 years. Called back to Snoop's dressing room a few hours later, the pint-sized rapper was dubbed "Lil' Bow Wow" by Snoop, and was hired as the opening act for Snoop's tour. Lil' Bow Wow even made a guest appearance on Snoop's groundbreaking Doggystyle CD--a move that might raise more eyebrows than even LBW's long work hours. "I was on the 'What do you want to be when you grow up' [skit. I was] the little boy cursing," LBW says of his controversial Snoop collaboration. Indeed, Lil' Bow Wow's interpretation of a Monday morning classroom activity gone awry is enough to make C. Delores Tucker bug her eyes and faint dead away.
Still, at 4'8" and weighing in at a hefty 89 pounds, Lil' Bow Wow is, surprisingly, about as normal as a 13-year-old can be. He's already started working out at a neighborhood gym ("I bench-press 90 pounds," he boasts), he enjoys playing basketball (as evidenced when he scored seven points on MTV's Rock 'N Jock Basketball--"I'm real nice on the court," says LBW), and he even loves video games. "I like sports games," he says, his voice immediately raising a notch in excitement. "When I'm playing [video] football, I like to be the Saints, because I like Ricky Williams. When I play NBA games, I like to play with the Sixers or the Lakers. Kobe [Bryant] is my favorite Laker, because he's just fascinating to watch. And I like Allen Iverson a lot."
Guess boys will be boys, after all.
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