“Stop; now think about it”: reckoning with the sad transformation of B.o.B
By Brittany Menjivar
Social experiment: grab some friends and start up a nostalgic conversation about the kings and queens of pop radio in the early 2010s. If you chat for long enough, B.o.B’s name is bound to come up. “Oh, man; where is that iconic rapper now?” someone will inevitably ask. In case you don’t already know the disheartening answer, here it is, straight from Wikipedia: “B.o.B is an outspoken believer that the earth is flat.” That’s right—our own Bobby Ray Simmons Jr. is now the kind of man who goes on absurd Twitter rants and calls himself Flat Earth Bob.
“Do you miss B.o.B?” is definitely not a question I ever expected to be asking myself in the Year of Our Lord 2018. Yet a few weeks ago, when one of his songs came up on shuffle during a study session and my friends and I instinctively sang along, the tragedy of his absence finally dawned on us. B.o.B’s goofy, laid-back appeal was a boon to pop radio; unfortunately, many of us didn’t appreciate him until he fell off the face of the (very spherical) earth. It is time to beg B.o.B to abandon his false science and redeem himself; it is time to reckon with what we have lost, and what must be regained.
I’m only going to talk about B.o.B’s singles here, because I don’t think most people’s schema of B.o.B’s music goes beyond them. To get a glimpse of the jovial, jocular image B.o.B projected through said singles, one need only take a look at his collaborators. Most notably, he’s worked with the cheeky romantic Bruno Mars, the punky girl next door Hayley Williams, and the nerdy Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo. None of these artists are particularly imposing; rather, they’re the type of people you can easily picture laughing and smiling with. This makes perfect sense, as B.o.B made music to laugh and smile to.
Exhibit A: “Nothin’ on You,” Bobby Ray’s breakout hit. The song begins softly, sweetly: Bruno Mars is crooning about his unshakeable devotion to the girl he’s seeing, with piano and backup vocals for accompaniment. Then B.o.B leaps in, an unknown coming out of nowhere, echoing Bruno’s words in emphatic shouts. When the chorus ends, he gets real: “I know you feel where I’m coming from/regardless of the things in my past that I’ve done,” he says before launching into a monologue about the “nonsense” on his “conscience.” Do we really know anything about B.o.B’s history? No, but he’s so sincere that we can’t help but pretend we do, just to buy into this good fellow’s good ruse.
After B.o.B lays down that bit of truth, he serves us some fun and games. He interjects often in the form of backing vocals, shouting things like, “Hey!” “Ha-ha,” and “Why?” He tells the object of his affection, “You got me froze like a Nintendo 64,” endearingly winking at those who feed off of ‘90s kid nostalgia. Most fascinatingly, he delivers the metaphor, “You’re my Wonder Woman; call me Mr. Fantastic. Stop; now think about it.” What is there to think about here? The fact that Wonder Woman and Mr. Fantastic are from completely different fictional universes (DC vs. Marvel) and have thus never interacted? The comparison is deeply puzzling—but that’s just another part of the entertaining mystery that is B.o.B.
If you need more evidence of B.o.B’s peculiar prowess, look no further than “Magic.” The intro—“Hi, my name is Bob, and I approve this message” says it all. Throughout the song, with beautiful absurdity, he claims that he’s on friendly terms with fellow 2000s/2010s star Criss Angel (which we could neither confirm nor deny at the time of publication) and compares himself to Aretha Franklin. Too cocky? Not so fast—on the Grammy-nominated track “Airplanes,” he discusses his humble roots, longing for the time “when [he] was trying to get a tip at Subway.” In 2010, when this song was released, there was nothing vaguely offensive nor objectionable about him. He was a rapper who employed inaccurate comic book allusions and magic trick metaphors; there was no reason not to love him.
Still, all things must come to an end, and slowly, B.o.B’s clout began to dwindle. He had a minor success with 2012’s “So Good” and “Both of Us” (featuring Taylor Swift), but come Underground Luxury, his third LP, he was no longer in the news.
Then came the flat-earther phase.
Was it a hoax gone too far, a ploy to regain attention? We may never know--but what we do know is that in 2016, B.o.B tweeted some photos that he believed proved the flat-earth hypothesis with the caption “No matter how high in elevation you are… The horizon is always eye level… sorry cadets.” These posts created such an uproar that Neil deGrasse Tyson contacted B.o.B to correct him, in a turn of events that felt as surreal as that ancient crossover episode between Lilo and Stitch and Kim Possible. Still, B.o.B wouldn’t budge. “If my tweets are rattling the tiny little cages of your reality… the unfollow button is right there,” he proclaimed, addressing his followers at large. Because life is now a farce, this episode culminated with a diss track battle between B.o.B and Neil deGrasse Tyson’s nephew Stephen (which deserves an article of its own, but that’s a digression for another day).
The craziness didn’t stop there. In 2017, wanting some evidence to shove in the faces of detractors, B.o.B started a GoFundMe campaign (“Show B.o.B The Curve”) to raise a million dollars. With this funding, he said, he would “purchase and launch multiple weather balloons and satellites into space, for experimental exploration.” At the time of publication, he’s only reached $6,919.
For a while, it seemed like the chaos had calmed down. Then B.o.B came back with an even more outrageous statement—he doubted the existence of American slavery. There is a great difference between fundamentally misunderstanding the Earth’s physics and casually brushing aside a tragedy that permanently affected the cultural landscape of the United States. B.o.B’s skepticism prefigured similarly controversial statements made by Kanye West—for example, his “slavery sounds like a choice” comment on TMZ. Do many people have so little sense that they’ll look to celebrities for information regarding science and history? Probably not—but the fact that stars like B.o.B are so vocal about such misguided opinions is just as alarming as it is amusing, as it reflects the less than ideal state of our nation at the moment. 2010 isn’t too far away, in the grand scheme of things, but given the general unrest in the air these days—plus the fact that those who listened to B.o.B in middle school are now critically thinking college students—it’s easy to view it as an idyllic age, a paradise lost. Perhaps, then, to long for the old B.o.B is to long for a time when it was easier to bounce along in starry-eyed oblivion, thinking of things like the Nintendo 64; when absurdity wasn’t a regular part of the daily news cycle.
B.o.B is still putting out music, but who’s listening? Although it’s still a pleasure to return to his classic hits, is denial of basic science and history commands far more attention than his records do at this point. Bobby Ray—are you reading this? What are you really trying to gain as Flat Earth Bob? Stop; now think about it.