What happens to you when your light dims?

Back in 2000 Bow Wow was a fresh-faced little kid rapping about ghetto girls. Now he’s a lost little puppy still searching for credibility within the Hip Hop world.

Let’s be real, Bow was never a “thugged-out” type of rapper. When he first stepped on the scene, he was welcomed by bright-eyed female fans, the ideal audience for a young rapper, but that type of popularity comes with a price.

Besides being brushed off as another bubblegum-rapper, you have no chance of ever being taken seriously. In all fairness, he was doomed from the start.

Now, at 22, Bow has no real sense of who he is, or where he wants his music to go; and as the world doubts him, he’s positioning himself to give rap another try.

Contrary to popular belief, Bow’s transformation was not overnight. When he wasn’t fighting off tabloid rumors of a “relationship” with Ciara, R&B’s princess at the time, he was getting tattoos, drinking and dating video vixens. The media labeled him as the “boy next door”, someone all the little girls would love and want to date and that probably was true-in the beginning, but as he got older, that “image” was hard to maintain.

At 19 he was a business owner, clothing designer, actor and rapper, set to take over the industry. Bow set his sights on knocking empires off their pedestal.

“I want to be bigger than Puff,” Bow Wow told Rap-Up magazine in an interview.  “I respect Puff, I love Puff’s grind, but I’m making moves at 19. You never heard of anyone owning anything at 19. A person owning a McDonald’s [and sneaker chain] at 19 is huge. I say give me 10 years to keep doing what I’m doing and hopefully I can be bigger than Puff.”

In 2005 Bow was transitioning to become an adult rapper and so naturally, he had to shed his young image and try to appeal harder and edgier. Yet still, he couldn’t completely change his pop-rap style, which he is known for.

His album Wanted was his first attempt at gaining a “hard-core” fan base, and with the club hit, “Fresh Azimiz”, Bow gave the first glimpse into what his life was like and everyone loved him for it, but in true fashion, that didn’t last long, and he resorted back to doing duets with R&B singers.

If you’re trying to revamp your image, doing a Hip Hop and R&B album, wouldn’t be the best idea. You’re screaming to be taken seriously and craving credibility, yet you continue to dance around and perform in videos, begging for a girlfriend. Confusing to say the least, and if that wasn’t enough, Bow followed up Face Off, his duet album with Omarion, with a Jermaine Dupri laced album titled New Jack City Pt. II, which solidified his fate as a bootleg TI.

Once again, the world was left wondering what happened to the rough-and-ready Bow Wow from the previous album.

Not one to sit on the sidelines, Bow is very proactive about climbing back up the charts. His most recent claim-to-fame was signing with Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment.

Whether or not this was the best move for Shad Moss is left to be seen, but what can be said is that he shows no signs of slowing down.

Remember, he’s not cocky, he’s confident; there is a difference.

“I can be arrogant at times [laughs], but a lot of people won’t admit that. I think there is a difference. Cocky is like, “I’m the boss. I run you,” he said."Being cocky is like a swagger, flyboy type of thing. I don’t mean [any] harm by it. A lot of the best are arrogant.”