Just What is Bow Wow Trying to Prove with his Album Title?

Back in '87-- the same year Bow Wow was born-- a journalist by the name of Barry Michael Cooper wrote an article in The Village Voice entitled "Kids Killing Kids: New Jack City Eats Its Young," which was about the youth drug trade. After that article dropped, the phrase "New Jack City" caught like wildfire and spread all over each and every city that fit the description.

Description of what? That's the same question that comes to mind when I think of Bow Wow's upcoming album New Jack City Part II.

Bow Wow's image, and presumably the contents inside of this jewel case soon to be available in stores, does NOT FIT the definition of what "New Jack City" is. At all. Nor does Bow Wow and his "rapping" relate to anything in "New Jack City" Part ONE-- a motion picture that was released back in 1991. Which leaves me utterly confused.

Check this out:

11 July 1989, Village Voice, pg. 34: A new economic and psychic environment: New Jack City. New Jack City exists wherever there's a crack house, a back room stuffed with stolen VCRs and family jewelry, bleary-eyed young girls with bad breath willing to do the Unthinkable wuth the Anonymous....New Jack City exists in Harlem, the Bronx, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Detroit, Los Angeles, (etc.).

6 May 1990, New York Times, pg. 40: The other film, "New Jack City," [was] filmed entirely in the city [of Manhattan], it highlights rap music, drugs, police officers and other features of urban life.

And then we have Bow Wow's current lead single "You Can Get It All," which samples TLC's "Baby Baby Baby"-- a song that was #1 during the time when the New Jack Swing subgenre was at its height.

With all of the above stated, am I missing something here? What is J.D trying to accomplish? Shock value? Suggesting that anything that was "New York's" can now be taken and used by anyone? If this was the intention, then it failed. Because A) I'm the only one that took note. Aka, nobody cares. And B), Bow Wow's fans are too young to even know what the hell New Jack City means. They probably think it's a new phrase.

And I actually took the time to watch Bow Wow's new video. The mixing is horrible. Especially when the singer comes in with the bridge. The lyrics sounds like Bow Wow actually wrote his own rhymes this time around. And that's not a good thing.

I'm glad the phrase "New Jack City" has been basically long forgotten. Because Bow Wow here has turned it into something cheesy. I can't even say "corny," which is an understatement. Even the album cover-- which freeze frames Bow Wow doing a jumping jack with Hammer pants on-- is a more ghastly image than Harlem streets back in '87.

Looking at what "The Source" did with putting Bow Wow and J.D on the cover just makes sh*t worse. And just when I thought "The Source" was making a turn-around.