It’s been a long time since we saw Bow Wow with long hair, an oversized jersey and a mic glued to his hand while spitting rap bars onstage in front of teenage fangirls.

Even though those days have long been over with, there’s still so much nostalgia to enjoy from his earliest and most adorable rap days when the world knew the now-30-year-old Shad Moss as Lil Bow Wow.

In a #ThrowBackThursday post from the Instagram account Urban Throwbacks, a literal little Bow Wow was invited to the couch of comedian, actor and talk show host Arsenio Hall on his early ‘90s late night show The Arsenio Hall Show. Fitted in his classic hooded-jersey, he introduced himself to the audience as Hall foreshadowed a 6-year-old Bow Wow’s burgeoning rap career that turned out to happen exactly as he predicted. Thereafter, the video cuts to young Bow dominating the stage in a freestyle performance for the audience with all the cadence and swag of a rap talent that would soon belong to the notorious Death Row Records.

The throwback happens to be just one of many days from the Growing Up Hip-Hop star’s prime, as he also made cameos in films such as Like Mike, All About the Benjamins with Ice Cube and Johnson Family Vacation with Solange before becoming an industry mainstay.

See one of his first child star stages in hip-hop below.