Put yourself in the place of B.o.B.
If you go
B.O.B. opening for Lupe Fiasco on the Steppin Laser Tour
Where: 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW
When: 7 p.m. (doors) Tuesday
Info: 930.com; sold out at press time, but tickets may be available from resellers.
Here he is out in the clubs, and his idols (such as Eminem) stop to tell him he’s the major star in the room. Heady stuff, especially when you’re 21 and the release date of your album has been bumped way up to meet demand for your sound. Yet B.o.B. is determined to keep his head down and his career on track despite the kudos. “Everything is real methodical. It’s kind of understood in the studio you got to work, it doesn’t matter who you are working with you have to move toward the goal,” he said. “Sometimes when you are a younger artist working with other people like Eminem you have a hard time grasping it’s you there but you have to do it, just stay focused on business. … I’m a natural sponge so I just really took in as much as I could.”
The result is “B.o.B. presents: The Adventures of Bobby Ray,” an album that has such a huge buzz its release date was bumped from May 25 to April 27. Such hip-hop luminaries as Eminem, T.I. and Lupe Fiasco contributed to the album.
While many will point to the success as “overnight,” B.o.B. — born Bobby Ray Simmons — knows this album is something he’s been working for since he was 14, growing up outside of Atlanta and listening to his parents’ music — the O’Jays, the Temptations and Al Green — as well as rappers he favored.
“I started finding people who knew how to make beats so we just rapped on the beats … and we had a laptop and desktop microphone,” he said. “Have you seen the movie ‘Hustle and Flow?’ That’s pretty accurate.”
B.o.B. remembers working hard on two songs for a demo that he recorded at an area mall. The then precious $35 bought him two recordings and no retakes. Thanks to what he calls a great team, his music was noticed and he began to work his way into the business, signing with Grand Hustle in 2008.
B.o.B.’s raps are almost vignettes, heartfelt stories set to a beat and loops that tell broader stories than most of the snapshots in time many rappers relay.
“That is what is so funny,” B.o.B, who grew up in Decatur, Ga., said. “The art of hip-hop has a lot of manifestation because you have to write it and then speak it and rap it. But hip-hop lets you hit [the story] from all angles.”
