CD Reviews

Bow Wow

The Price of Fame | Columbia

By MIKAEL WOOD | December 28, 2006

2.0 Stars

From its Illmatic-quoting cover to its boasts of “money stacks taller than the Empire State,” 2005’s Wanted was Bow Wow’s coming-of-age album, an opportunity for a youngster known to most listeners as a kiddie-pop novelty to prove himself a rapper worth considering alongside grown-up MCs. What made Wanted so gripping, though, was the way it captured Bow Wow in an in-between phase — not a boy, not yet a man, to paraphrase fellow Disney Channel alum Britney Spears. On The Price of Fame, Bow appears to have completed his graduation from Hip-Hop High; his voice has deepened, and the beats hew to the Southern-bounce template you can hear on the radio by simply turning it on. The problem is that he’s far less interesting as an adult than he was as a kid. In “Don’t Know About That,” he warns aging rappers to get out of his way because he’s on a mission to provide hip-hop with some new energy. Yet it’s unclear how that new energy differs from the old energy. “All I do is get money,” he admits with a bored-sounding sigh at one point. Are congratulations in order?

Topics: CD Reviews , Britney Spears, Entertainment, Hip-Hop and Rap, More

| More

See more deals

view all

[ 02/20 ] "Optical Noise: American & British Prints/Films from the 1960s-1970s: @ David Winton Bell Gallery

[ 02/20 ] Third Annual Providence Children's Film Festival @ Cable Car Cinema

[ 02/20 ] "The Providence Postcard Project" @ Brown University's Granoff Center, Martinos Auditorium

ARTICLES BY MIKAEL WOOD

THE CHEMICAL BROTHERS | FURTHER | July 07, 2010
Astralwerks (2010)

DEVO | SOMETHING FOR EVERYBODY | July 01, 2010
Given the theory of de-evolution these Ohio brainiacs began expounding more than 30 years ago, it makes a sad kind of sense that Devo's first album since 1990's Smooth Noodle Maps offers such a charmless, base-level version of the band's synth-addled new wave.

TAIO CRUZ | ROKSTARR | June 24, 2010
When Taio Cruz sings, "I can't live without you," in "Take Me Back," pop-song conventions tell us he's referring to a lover.

THE FUTUREHEADS | THE CHAOS | June 16, 2010
"I wish that I could stop the noise," sings Barry Hyde not long into The Chaos . It sure doesn't seem that way.

BETTYE LAVETTE | INTERPRETATIONS: THE BRITISH ROCK SONGBOOK | June 01, 2010
Bettye LaVette’s previous two albums had titles that required a little digging to unpack.