Shad Moss—better known as Bow Wow—has announced his retirement from rap over the weekend.

In the beginning of August, Moss embarked on a tour in Australia, stopping in cities such as Canberra, Newcastle, and Melbourne. After performing at a club called Alumbra, Moss shared photos on social media with a message to his fans. At 29 years old, he is hanging up the mic for good.

This shouldn’t come as much of a surpise. Moss has struggled with his relevancy in hip-hop since exploding on the scene as Lil’ Bow Wow in the early 2000s, when he earned several platinum and gold albums alongside his mentor Jermaine Dupri. Bow Wow’s adult career had a few recognizable moments like when he made Face Off with Omarion and signed to Cash Money in 2009. Outside of music, he's made a career in television with gigs like hosting BET's now defunct 106 & Park and playing a top hacker named Brody “Baby Face” Nelson on CSI: Cyber.

Since then, he’s attempted several times to spark interest in his music again, recently leaving his situation with Cash Money and reportedly signing a management deal with Bad Boy Records. This decision was supported by a collaboration with Dupri (“WYA (Where You At?)”) and new music (“All I Know”) that were released last year.

“Me and Jermaine, we are just at point where we just work,” he said of their chemistry to BET.com. “We just work. If it’s hot, we putting it out and we going with it. We just riding the wave. If we gotta put out one, we will. We ain’t hesitant to do that, but we ain’t in a rush to do it neither. We want to have some fun with the music. Get out here, put these records out for the people and go out here and do what we gotta do. And build this ship up. That’s when we want to do.”

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Some fans were perplexed by the announcement, saying that he was technically already “retired” from rap.

We may need a further explanation from Bow by what he exactly means by "retirement." On Saturday, he posted on Instagram that his final album would be called Nylth, which would be executive produced by Snoop Dogg and himself. Maybe he means retiring after the movie of the same name and the soundtrack comes out?


Well, for now let's bid farewell to Bow Wizzle. It's been an incredible run.