I’ve been off of my “rappers’ official Web sites” game recently, half out of boredom and half because the new Firefox has been acting buggy with me and doesn’t always get along with Flash. (One of the rules of putting together an official Web site for a rapper is that is must use eight times more Flash than necessary.) So it wasn’t until today that I got over to Bow Wow’s site. I bet he’s kinda pissed that his URL is still lilbowwow.com after spending so much effort to get rid of the “Lil” in his name, but bowwow.com is owned by Bow-Wow Auto Parts, and maybe despite their cute doggy logo they’re really gangsta about owning their URL. Maybe Bow Wow has been following the sex.com saga and wants to avoid the hassle of all of those lawsuits and murder attempts, although I think a rapper-vs-Web site beef just screams “next level.”
But his site is decent and all. It has the auto-start music–another de rigueur hip-hop Web site feature–that opens with Mr. Wow proclaiming the need for new sounds in rap before going directly into a song that sounds like it could have come out of Houston any time in the past zillion years, and that’s cool. And if you dig around for a little bit, you can find the promo photo of Bow Wow in a hipster neckerchief, Paul Wall grill, and slave chains, which is seriously the look we should all be considering for next year. Actually, though, I’m still trying to figure out the slave-chains part. They might represent the Twix commercial he was in. Or maybe just the stress of being young and incredibly famous and stupid rich and all the other shit that has been forced on him. Bow Wow, if you’re reading this, please let me know what I can do to help you feel better. It hurts me to know you feel this way.
I’ll give the site a rating of three crashed Firefox browsers out of a possible five. If Bow Wow’s still reading this far, I would suggest he gets his dudes onto some Flash video game action. Paul Wall used to have a game on his site where you were a candy-paint car that blew falling objects out of the sky with its trunk bass, and that game is why he had the best rapper site ever. But now it’s gone, so Paul Wall’s down to a two-crash rating. If Paul Wall’s reading this, I want him to know that I’m officially starting beef with him over his Web design. I know you like the Internet, Paul Wall, but are you ready to start battles over it?