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Historical Background
December 11th, 2009 by khaleddn
I decided to study the career of a hip hop artist who was once in the same situation as the children are in today. I needed to study someone who followed in the same footsteps as hip hop stars whom he aspired to, when growing up. It would also be interesting to see how big hip hop stars react to this new aspiring artist, when he is very young and trying to gain a fan base. This is why I chose hip hop artist, Bow Wow. Bow Wow has a history of being the young, innocent little rapper, whereas he’s always tried to imitate his role models and break out of that soft and cute exterior of is into something more tough and “gangsta”.
I have researched and gathered a historical background that overlooks how this artist has changed during his career, in terms of behavior, attitude, priorities, image and music. The artist whom I will be studying is Bow Wow, previously known as Lil’ Bow Wow.
Lil’ Bow Wow officially started off his career at the age of thirteen, when he made his first debut on Beware of Dog, in 2000. When he was younger, hip hop star, Snoop Dog, discovered him and featured in his hits and participated in his music videos. The interest that Snoop Dog invested in Lil’ Bow Wow is what peaked the public’s love for him and started his fan base. Throughout Lil’ Bow Wow’s career, he had many famous hip hop artists and rappers feature in his singles. This shows us that he received the support of older generation artists and was mentored by them, even being a couple of generations after them. This mentoring and Lil’ Bow Wow’s ambition to become like them, is what made him follow in their footsteps from such an early age. Lil’ Bow Wow resembles the older artists and is keeping their style, attitude and lingo alive with today’s younger fans (Biography Website 1, 2009). Fig. 1 shows the innocent looking Lil’ Bow Wow, when he first started and how innocent he is.
Fig. 1. Lil Bow Wow in the beginning of his career. (Bow Wow Image 1, August 2008)
Lil’ Bow Wow, started off with somewhat acceptably appropriate music videos, for his age, at thirteen. A couple of hits later, and as he became more popular, he began to shift away from the cute and innocent Lil’ Bow Wow to a shocking, “gangsta”, “badass” Bow Wow, and dropped the Lil’ in 2003. He changed his look, his fashion style, covered himself with tattoos and as street hip hop language would have it, started rolling with the big dogs now. The Fig.2 image shows the major shift in Bow Wow’s image, to fit into the new identity and look he has.
Fig. 2 Bow Wow with Soulja Boy (Bow Wow Image 2, April 2009)
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