Bow Wow - <EM>Unleashed</EM> - Bow Wow but not "Wow"

Enter plain 'n simple Bow Wow exchanging the colour by numbers hip-hop lite blueprint that So So Def producer Jermaine Dupri polished his pop raps with for a more mature urban beat flow courtesy of Jazzy Pha, Swiss Beatz and Lil Jon. Okay so the aforementioned trio are hardly household production names, but nonetheless try hard to provide Bow with a tough enough beat stage to suggest he may yet grow up to be a major player.

Then again, maybe not. For as carbon copy in da club style party boasts ("Get it Poppin') show without his candy girl mewl, Bow's newly found faux pimp thug patois isn't at all that "Wow" any more. As an emcee Bow does successfully mix it up at the mic with Baby in the staccato funk "Let's Get Down", but seems caught between wannabe explicit rap daydreams ("Eighteen") and all ages Jackson 5 style soul outtakes ("My Baby" featuring Jagged Edge).

But who knows, having taken his first tentative steps into a possible Hollywood movie career with Like Mike (2002), maybe Bow is merely weighing up his options. His limp endeavours to jiggy up his groove ("Hey Little Momma") certainly insist that he's not quite ready to risk alienating his teen audience. You see, despite occasionally embracing the street-filtered gangster grooves he so clearly craves ("The Don, the Dutch") Bow shows that he's still a mama's boy at heart ("To My Mama" featuring Amerie).