The Price of Fame

Bow Wow doesn’t want to lose his old audience

Bow Wow is entering a pretty serious stage of his career. Having reached a 19 years-old mark he cannot count any longer on popularity that his early records gave him. He is facing that very moment when he needs to make his best efforts if he wants to pass to a new performing level and enrich the list of respected rappers. And he’s got all the necessary prerequisites in doing this: name, fame and personal contacts. It only requires an interesting, high-quality product from him, which will be able to attract new audience. But still, understanding this, Bow Wow doesn’t seem to like the idea of losing his teenaged fans. His current attempt to get closer to the world of “mature” rap has taken the shape of his new album The Price Of Fame. It has a lot in common with his last year release Wanted, where Bow Wow has been also trying to sound more serious and harsh but at the same time avoiding rude phrases and pausing some foul words. However The Price Of Fame reflects a formation of a new Bow Wow’s style, which definitely different from what he was doing on his early records.

Price Of Fame manages to represent a new sounding

The best composition of this album is definitely single Shortie Like Mine, which perfectly combines beautiful vocal tunes, diverse recitative and soft mid tempo beat. The song stands out so brightly due to its delicate sounding as the rest of the album is mostly having more harsh and energetic sounding. This can be distinctively heard at the self-titled song Price Of Fame. This is a slow beat piece with a gloomy keyboard under layer and a swampy Bow Wow’s rapping. 4 Corners sounds pretty attractive too, here Bow Wow is accompanied by Lil Wayne, Pimp C, Lil Scrappy and Short Dawg. One of the most interesting songs, where Bow Wow evokes no associations with his old creative works and makes you forget that his is only 19 years old, is the track called Tell Me. Bow Wow doesn’t mind boasting about his achievements in both, musical career and financial success, he is periodically dropping in phrases containing similar content here and there all across the album. The track that is dedicated to these, pretty ordinary for rap music subjects is another mid tempo variation called Don’t Know About That. It is also worth mentioning the last song of the album I’mma Flirt recorded with R. Kelly’s assistance.

Dangerous transitional period

It seems like Bow Wow is moving through a dangerous transitional period in his musical career. Anyhow, in his comments that he was giving just before the album’s release he openly admits that The Price Of Fame may become his last record. But this doesn’t mean that he gave up trying hard to make his music good, just on the contrary, at least judging by the sale rates of his albums, he is doing quite well in it. Many critics expressed rather negative opinion about his latest releases and they foretell nothing promising to his career. But it is still worth reminding about Bow Wow’s prevalent audience. Who are his fans for the first place? These are not half criminal hustlers just right out from ghetto and not those hip hop fans who listen to this kind of music since early 90’s. Rather these are school kids or teenagers of his age. You can’t expect a young lad to make something that would deeply astonish your mind. The Price Of Fame is a good record, made up on a good level and it has nice songs as well as the prerequisite for Bow Wow to achieve what he wants and become a new “mature” rap star, if he won’t give it up of course. Till then, Bow Wow corresponds to his teenage status, and his new album will meat its audience regardless any critics.