Beware of Dog is another platinum album gone right by Lil Bow Wow as a sellout. The album incorporates pop rap with aggressive gangsta rap. Pop meets rap on the album. Production wise the album was wonderful. You had hot in-house producers of the time on this album such as Jermaine Dupri, George Clinton, and Bryan-Michael Cox. With in-house producers such as Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox, you couldn’t go wrong. The album reached #8 on the Billboard 200 on October 14, 2000 and reached #1 on the US Hot Rap chart in 2001 making his debut album a platinum success.
Beware of Dog was heavily promoted by So So Def and Columbia/Sony when it was released in 2000 leading it to become a triple platinum success! The album was promoted in commercials that aired on television with channels such as BET, VH1, and MTV. At that time, Bow Wow was a household name for preteens across the United States and Canada. (And eventually the world.) He was considered a platinum rapper guaranteed for success. You couldn’t go anywhere in the country without hearing music being played.
Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox were in charge of the songwriting by choosing different songwriters such as Da Brat, Rahman Griffin, and Jagged Edge. Jermaine Dupri and Bryan-Michael Cox were the main songwriters.
AllMusic, NME, and HipHopDX, critiqued the album for songwriting and gave it praise for its pop sound. Conservative music critic Robert Christgau graded the album as a "dud” by criticizing the songwriting. That is obviously nonsense to call the album a dud as it was platinum success.
The lead single Bounce with Me was a platinum jam. The song was used in the Martin Lawrence film “Big Momma's House’’ and released as a single around the same time the film was being played back in 2000. Coincidentally Bounce With Me is a feel good song that is considered a summer anthem.
Jermaine Dupri of So So Def experimented with the sound of New Orleans bounce on This Playboy. If you pay attention to the tempo, you will notice its upbeat nature. It’s not your average mid tempo song. The horns blaring give the song a provocative nature.
Bow Wow (That's My Name) is song that incorporates pop into gangsta rap by featuring Snoop Dogg. His lyrics and style of rapping are aggressive with a gritty street sound. Snoop Dogg's verse are what made the song gangsta. To set the record straight, all versions of this song have profanities censored, including the second half of "motherfucker" in Snoop's verse, leading listeners to only hear "woof mother...the Dogg came to play".
I rate this album, Beware of Dog, 5/5*****!!
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