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What About B.o.B? :: Atlanta’s latest rapper/producer/acronym brings lonely strangeness to the club

By Brandon Perkins   Photography by phil knott

02/20/08 :: URB 152

Atlanta has a long history of hip-hop weirdos. Even before André 3000 was wearing pink fur boots up to his knees, OutKast, yes, “outcasts,” released a record named after a 31-letter non-word (Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik) that mined The Steve Miller Band and Miles Davis for samples. The Dungeon Family collective that galvanized OutKast’s early records also laced Goodie Mob, who, as if they weren’t strange enough, morphed into one half of Gnarls Barkley (and keeping it one-hunnid, Danger Mouse has Atlanta roots, too). Da Backwudz sampled the Oompah Loompah theme song and Ludacris walked around with a gold-dipped midget around his neck. And ain’t no one weirder than Lil’ Jon. I mean, stripper techno was mixed with rap by a muppet (who carried around a diamond-encrusted cup) and a whole country called it “crunk” (while chanting a synonym for ejaculation). They call’em ATLiens for a reason.

There is, however, a new weirdo in town. Quite plainly, his name is B.o.B. While he doesn’t dress up as movie characters or a platinum-wigged disco dancer from outer space, he does earnestly sample The Outfield’s “I Don’t Want to Lose Your Love Tonight” without an ounce of irony. (Hipsters can provide their own). B.o.B also flips early-‘90s Miami trance like he invented the synth specifically for an over-the-top banger. Whether the samples resonate with listeners as nostalgia (or straight cheese for the first-time) is irrelevant, because B.o.B’s songs are fun. Imagine that, fun. And yet, according to him, the rapper/producer never had a friend in his entire life until just a few months ago.

“I was pretty much alone my whole life,” B.o.B says, quite matter of factly, as if self-pity was a concept of actual aliens. “I never really hung around anybody. I just stayed in my rap book, that was my friend.”

The weirdos that paved B.o.B’s path—those ATLiens—were and are all 100% completely cool. André was the art school kid banging the cheerleader, theoretically speaking, of course. Lil Jon quite obviously rolled with the popular click. Even Cee-Lo posed with a supermodel in Sports Illustrated. But B.o.B? What about Bob?

He doesn’t have a favorite set of words to fill out his acronym, but there are a gang of choices: Bangin’ on Beats, Beats on Blast, Business over Bullshit, Baller on a Budget (when he was broke), never Been one Better (when he chooses to ignore an N-word) or Bring one Blunt. The acronyms aren’t all that natural and, in fact, feel miles away from the nicknames that result from friendships built around idle after-school afternoons and the mischief that inevitably fills adolescent gaps in time. Little Bobby Ray Simmons, who hid in his rap book and imagined himself as B.o.B, probably came up with all of his hopeful persona’s meanings. And he was made fun of for all those dreams.

“I really was lost,” he says. “I was so different that I just couldn’t understand what was going on or why people cared about what they cared about. It affected me, I mean, I was hurtin’ when I was a kid, but I just couldn’t understand it so it made me just go into this shell. I remember telling myself, ‘I’m just gonna make it. That’s just what’s gonna happen’ and since then I’ve been proving to myself that I can be good at something. I was always the second string player my whole life and I spent my whole life trying to prove that I was first string.”