Lil Bow Wow - Bow Wow (That's My Name) ft. Snoop Dogg

JUL 01 2000 · 12:00

Lil Bow Wow - Bow Wow (That's My Name) ft. Snoop Dogg (2000) Director: Dave Meyers Era: Early 2000s Hip-Hop Boom (2000) - Crossover pop-rap era defined by major-label youth marketing, West Coast/Atlanta fusion aesthetics, and the rise of BET 106 & Park as a cultural tastemaker Exceptional. This video is a first-generation artifact of the BET 106 & Park era, literally the first video the show ever retired. It captures the precise collision of Atlanta industry infrastructure, West Coast authenticity, and early-digital visual production that shaped the look and feel of mainstream hip-hop for the following decade. As an early Dave Meyers directorial work, it also documents his developing visual language prior to his Grammy-winning peak. High priority acquisition for any hip-hop visual culture archive. Context: Released October 17, 2000, as the second single from Lil Bow Wow's debut album Beware of Dog (So So Def / Columbia Records), this video arrived at the precise moment when youth-targeted hip-hop was being industrialized by Jermaine Dupri's Atlanta machine. Shot in Los Angeles, the video leveraged Snoop Dogg's West Coast credibility to frame 13-year-old Shad Moss as a legitimate rap figure rather than a novelty act. The video's BET 106 & Park dominance, voting it #1 and ultimately retiring it as the first-ever retired video on the show, cemented both the record's commercial power and BET's emerging role as the primary television gatekeeper for Black youth hip-hop culture, a direct counterpoint to MTV's TRL pop dominance at the time. Director notes: According to Wikipedia's article on 'Bow Wow (That's My Name)', the video was shot in Los Angeles and directed by Dave Meyers. The video became the #1 video on BET's 106 & Park and was the first music video on that show to be retired, a landmark achievement for both Lil Bow Wow and Meyers. Meyers also directed the album's lead single 'Bounce with Me' (per IMDB), making him the primary visual architect of the Beware of Dog campaign. The video was released in support of the single dated October 17, 2000.