A History of Bow Wow Taking L's

From losing a battle of wits with his mom on Instagram to that thing at the Grammys, here's a collection of Bow Wow's biggest L's.

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Ah, Bow Wow. Remember the world's first glimpse of him—being discovered by Snoop Dogg in 1993 at age six, and rapping his little heart out The Arsenio Hall Show?

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Unfortunately, since Lil Bow Wow dropped the "Lil" and stopped covering Kurtis Blow tunes and hanging around with Michael Jordan, the former child star has had some serious fails, many of them in full view of an often-vicious public. Just this week, he was caught pretending to be traveling by private jet, when he was actually riding commercial like the rest of us. The fail inspired the hilarious #BowWowChallenge.

But that was only one of the latest of Bow Wow's losses. Below, a curated list of some of the biggest ones. We couldn't include them all, because who's got that kind of time?

January 2010: Cut It Out, Mom!

Early in 2010, Bow Wow's mom joined Twitter. She then proceeded to do what moms have done throughout time—say stuff that embarrasses their kids.

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Bow Wow said he was going to make his mom delete her account. And then it all went wrong. Fans were clearly on her side, rather than his. Finally, desperate, he said he would delete his own account unless his mom got rid of hers. And she responded in a thread-killing, quietly vicious, perfectly mom-like way.

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June 2013: The Vine 

Bow Wow published a quick Vine of him walking in front of a bunch of children. "They don't know it's me. Oh shit," he exclaimed. He then laughed as if he was getting away with something. A bemused internet quickly responded, saying that the kids don't know who he is because, well, they don't know who he is.

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January 2014: Rent-A-Stunter

In early 2014, Bow Wow was in Los Angeles for Grammy weekend. He drove around in a Ferrari, and made sure to post plenty of pictures to social media of himself in the driver's seat. The captions implied that the car was his.

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Well, the rental car company didn't exactly appreciate that. They decided to claim some credit, and give Bow Wow another round of bad press in the process.

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December 2015: The (Mistaken) Origins of the Dab

By late 2015, Bow Wow had just about enough of dabbing. Everyone—football players, teenagers, politicians—were doing it, and they didn't know where it came from. 

As it turned out, neither did Bow Wow. He recorded a long, confusing message attempting to tie dabbing to smoking weed. 

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And he was immediately and roundly mocked, including by the dance's true originators.

February 2016: The Dangers of Live TV

Live television can be dangerous for even the most experienced performers. And Bow Wow met his match during the 2016 Grammys, when he messed up the end of the pre-show not once, but twice.

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April 2016: Fake Money

Bow Wow posted a shot on Instagram of a bunch of money. Typical rapper stuff, right? Well, not when the photo was actually taken by a stock trader named Timothy Sykes. Sykes called out Bow Wow on IG, and the two had a not-particularly-memorable back-and-forth involving fake watches. But the damage was already done to what was left of Bow Wow's reputation. 

March 2017: Going at the First Couple

In March of this year, because everything is terrible, Snoop Dogg was feuding with the President of the United States. Bow Wow came to the defense of his mentor Snoop in perhaps the most awkward, sexist, terrible way possible. He said, in a thankfully now-deleted Tweet, "Ayo @realDonaldTrump shut your punk ass up talking shit about my uncle @SnoopDogg before we pimp your wife and make her work for us."

June 2017: Bow Wow shares controversial opinion about women

You'd think Bow Wow would have learned about about watching what he says on social media after the Trump fiasco, but that's the thing about taking L's on the regular: you can't avoid them. In an Instagram message, the rapper shared a metaphor on how women should behave, and also claimed some women are "annoying and easy to smash" like mosquitos. 

He was immediately called out, with some describing his comments as sexist, while others told him to stay in his place. It turns out Bow Wow also stole the quote. Disrespectful and unoriginal? C'mon.

The above events are really only the beginning of Bow Wow's puzzling public L's. There was his beef with, of all people, Funkmaster Flex. There were the incredibly confusing remarks he made about voting and his family history, or something (no, seriously, read this and see if you can figure out what the hell he was talking about). There was time he announced his retirement from rap, only to be met with a hail of "I thought you were retired already!"-type comments. Oh, and that time he dropped the hottest mixtape of 2007...ten years too late.

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