Lil’ Bow Wow’s Running With Rap’s Big Dogs

In the audience are hundreds of greedy, giddy, giggling, grasping 10-year-old girls, screaming his name, no, shrieking his name, flinging themselves out of their seats, ricocheting against the walls of the auditorium. Bouncing up and down and around. Demanding his presence. Because, well, you know, he’s fiiiiiiiiiine. And they want him.

Now.

The deejay serves as their conductor, playing their desire until it’s one finely calibrated, ear-shattering symphony of prepubescent frenzy.

“Who y’all come to see?”

“BOW WOW!!!!”

“Who y’all come to see?”

“BOWWWWWWWW WOWWWWWW!!!”

Still they must wait.

Because right now the 13-year-old object of their obsession, Lil’ Bow Wow, needs his rest. And so, backstage in his dressing room, he curls up on a couch. Touring is a . . . well, he doesn’t cuss, but you get the picture.

He’s tired. Dog tired.

Lil’ Bow Wow is surprisingly small--and pretty. His eyes are light brown and extravagantly lashed, his chestnut hair coiled in elaborate cornrows that stretch down to just above his shoulders. Dimples poke through from time to time. When he smiles.

He’s certainly not smiling now.

“I’ve been working nonstop,” he says, his voice hovering somewhere between a deep kiddie tone and puberty. “When you’re number one, you have to do everything in your power to stay number one.”

Which means that this promotional appearance is just another day in the life of your average workaholic, platinum-selling, 4-foot-7, 85-pound rap superstar.

Lil’ Bow Wow--So So Def/Columbia recording artist, protege of Snoop Dogg and Jermaine Dupri--is hot. Think Michael Jackson before the nose job. And the shrieking fans are part of the perks that come when your debut CD, “Beware of Dog,” has sold more than a million copies, according to the Recording Industry Assn. of America, and your hit single, “Bounce With Me,” is on perennial airplay on MTV and BET.

Life is good. If you call working all the time good.

Hair nappy but I’m happy

pocket full of dough

from the C-O representing the So So

The girls recognize and these n----- do too

I’m the flyest thing walking through junior high school

That would be Reynoldsburgh Junior High in Columbus, Ohio, where the eighth-grader lives with his mom and stepdad. Of course, Bow Wow, a.k.a. Shad (“Don’t call me Shad”) Moss, isn’t there very much these days. Which is why God made tutors. Got to keep the 4.0 up. And yes, his last report card was a 4.0, according to his mom, Teresa Caldwell. Rap pays. A lot. But that’s not stopping him from planning to go to Harvard. Ivy League all the way.

“I always push school,” says Caldwell, the braces that gleam from her mouth subtracting a good 10 years from her actual 35. “Education is number one. He knows he has to go to college.”

And if his grades slip amid all the touring, the late-night video shoots with the likes of Destiny’s Child, Snoop and Fred Durst from Limp Bizkit?

“Oh yeah, he’ll be put on hold,” Caldwell says. “Quick.”

For years she was a struggling single mom, working three jobs. Now she’s taken a leave from her management job at a computer company to oversee his breakneck schedule.

At 6, her son got a chance to perform when Snoop Dogg’s Chronic Tour passed through Columbus. Snoop was so impressed he dubbed the boy “Lil’ Bow Wow,” and promptly hired him as his tour’s opening act.

Which prompted Caldwell to have a little heart-to-heart with her son.

“I told him, early on, that famous people work a lot,” Caldwell says. “I told him, ‘Your fans don’t know Shad, they know Bow Wow. They don’t know Bow Wow has bad days. They see this happy little kid. Are you sure you want this?’ ”

Yeah, he wants it. He likes writing his own rhymes (“I listen to the beat and then I think. I have to be in a space where I’m alone”) but agreed to let Dupri and rap star Da Brat pen the words for his first CD. Next one, he says, will be all Bow Wow. He’s learned to focus. Doesn’t have much time for friends. Doesn’t really want friends.

“I’m a self person,” he says, toying with his two-way pager.

He’s jaded. Except he doesn’t know what jaded means.

“I’ve seen everything,” he says. “I haven’t done everything, but I’ve seen everything.

“I’ve been at this since I was 6.”

One thing he’s seen quite a lot of is fans. Fans fighting over him, cussing each other out on the message boards at https://lilbowwow.com.

To Bow Wow, this is all good. It translates into record sales.

His security team handles the more troublesome fans.

“They help out with situations,” says Bow Wow. You know, situations.

“Riots. People acting stupid.”

Today he’s trying to avoid all that.

“Dino!” he says to his security manager, eyes squinting in concentration. “What does the crowd look like?”

“It’s packed to the back.”

“Not the back. The seats. I’m-a walk through the aisles. Tell them to get security straight.”

As the audience waits, deejays spin records. Little girls, and a handful of little boys, rap along to Jay-Z’s new hit, “I Just Wanna Love U (Give It 2 Me)”:

Got six model chicks, six bottles of Cris’

Four Belvederes, got weed everywhere

What do you say, me, you and your Clovey glasses

Go somewhere private where we can discuss fashion

Like, Prada blouse, Gucci bra

Filth marked jeans, take that off

Give it to me . . .

Spotlights start spinning, keeping time to the booming bass thumping through gargantuan speakers. Somewhere, offstage, Lil’ Bow Wow can be heard: “What! What! Oh! Oh!”

Then he’s running down the aisle--security guards keeping him far from the madding crowd--and leaping onto the stage.

He raps. He rocks. He rolls, prowling the stage, slapping palms. Soaking up the love.

“When I say Bow, y’all say wow! BOW!”

“WOW!”

Three songs, and it’s over. He’s outta there. But not without leaving behind an order:

“Show some support! In stores now! Knamean?

“I love y’all girls!!!!!”