Bow Wow And Omarion Recall Jay-Z Leaving Their Show After This One Song
The 2020 edition of The Millenium Tour is nearly upon us and fans have been waiting to see how the second installment will take shape in light of the new additions to the lineup. As you’ll recall, Omarion brought on Bow Wow, whom he synced up with on 2007’s Face Off, for the upcoming second leg of the tour, which will also include Ashanti, Soulja Boy, and the Ying Yang Twins among others.
Ahead of the tour’s rollout, O and Bow recently sat down for a joint interview with hip-hop journalists Elliot Wilson and Brian “B. Dot” Miller, the hosts of TIDAL’s popular podcast, Rap Radar. The two chopped it up about some of their most cherished moments from their respective careers and their musical influences. At one point during their discussion, Bow Wow acknowledged that he and O were inspired to collaborate on an album together after Jay-Z and R. Kelly jointly released The Best of Both Worlds in 2002.
“Just the fact that Kellz was the dominant R&B singer. Still to this day, I consider him that. Then you have Hov as far as the biggest rapper. So then I’m like, ‘Ain't nobody f***ing with [Omarion] and ain't nobody f***ing with me.’ Let’s learn from what they didn’t do and do that s**t,” Bow Wow elaborated.
He then revealed that Hov wound up coming to one of their Face Off tour stops at Madison Square Garden after he heard that Bow Wow and O were planning to perform a cover of the album’s title track. However, neither anticipated his response.
“He heard about it and said, ‘They perform Best of Both Worlds. That's the first song that they come out on.’ Bow does [Jay's] verse, [Omarion] does Kellz' part,” Bow Wow recollected. “So Hov comes to the Garden, stands in the tunnel, watches the intro. Me and O hyped. By the time the song was off, I looked in the tunnel, Hov was gone. He came to watch that one piece, there were twenty thousand in that m**herf**ker, he saw that s**t and then got in the car, and drove off.”
Elsewhere in the interview, Omarion revealed why Jermaine Dupri did not produce any of the tracks on their joint album. According to him, Bow Wow fired the So So Def mogul on the first day they were supposed to start recording music. Citing creative differences, the Growing Up Hip Hop: Atlanta star chimed in with his side of the story.
“Day one, we go into the studio and me, O and Jermaine are just talking,” Bow recalled. “I’m like, ‘I’m just not really feeling what the f**k he’s doing and the records that he wants to do.’”
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This led to a disagreement between the two, which prompted Dupri to challenge the two to make a hit without his help.
‘I gave y'all a No. 1 [hit on the Hot Rap Songs chart]. Y'all go ahead and make me proud and do it without me,’” Bow recalled Jermaine saying at the time, according to Genius. “And we did it, and we end up having a f**king successful album. It still sold like 755,000 copies and we dropped ‘Girlfriend’ and we were able to put out two singles.”
Check out a preview of Omarion and Bow Wow’s interview on Rap Radar below.
