Lil' Bow Wow: "Get Up"

The early-00s was an interesting time for rap.  All kinds of exciting new rappers were emerging, future top 25 MCs were solidifying their legacies, and many new trends were being birthed, none more pause-worthy than the sudden fascination with child rappers.  For the record, the only good child rapper ever has been Shyheim and I only say that because I'm Wu Tang for life, word is bond.  Lil' Bow Wow was this questionable trend's most successful product, going double platinum at the age 13, starring in a bunch of terrible movies, and making his own song about basketball which, despite being just no good at all, managed to be very popular and have Professional Rapper Fabolous on it.

Just because you can't be tried as an adult doesn't mean you can make terrible movies with impunity, kid.

Despite those credentials, Lil' Bow Wow totally sucks in every way, and his attempts to be taken seriously by removing the "Lil'" from his name have done nothing to modify that ineffable truth.  "Get Up," off of his second album (confusingly titled Doggy Bag) is a fine example of Lil' Bow Wow at his wackest, claiming that no one has a track record like he does or stacks paper in the same manner and generally making a convincing argument that he is to rap what Rebecca Black is to pop.

Seriously, in what way are his music videos any less embarrassing and terrible than "Friday"?

"Don't step in my rim. / I'm like Shaq, young man, don't step in my gym."

Explanation: I have no idea what the bit about the rim means (although he does sit on top of a basketball rim in the video for "Basketball" if I remember correctly, so maybe he means it literally?"), but he's basically just saying that you can't step in his area due to how fresh he is or something.

Awkwardness of Reference: I never know if it's fair to penalize perpetually awkward rappers for lines which are characteristic of their overall ineptness.  Yes, this is an awful and clumsy bit of rhyming, but not extraordinarily so by Lil' Bow Wow standards and certainly not the nadir of the song.  So should it get a decent rating based on a graded Lil' Bow Wow curve or should it be judged against the rich history of hip-hop NOT made by talentless adolescents?  I still haven't decided, so this one gets a 2 of 5 because the line still sucks, yo.

Cleverness of Reference: Same struggle here, but I'm more willing to be harsh with this one.  Terrible lines by terrible rappers are sometimes less-than-awkward because they don't have that "out of place" vibe that really makes a bad line awkward, but not-clever is just not-clever.  And this line is not clever. 1 of 5.

Appropriateness of Reference: Ultimately, Shaq probably wouldn't want you hanging around in his gym, since he was, at the time of this song's composition, a professional basketball player, so this line would score pretty highly in this category if it wasn't for the fact that a 15 year-old just called me "young man."  Shut the hell up, Lil' Bow Wow.  0 of 5.

Shaqness of Reference: This line could literally apply to any professional basketball player and, since Lil' Bow Wow's film Like Mike features nearly twenty NBA players (from Gary Payton to Chris Webber to Desmond Mason to REGGIE THEUS) and Shaq is not among them, I can't imagine why LBB decided to make Diesel his NBA shout-out.  1 of 5.

This is probably why Kidd never won a title with the Nets...

FINAL SHAQ SCORE: 4 OUT OF 20