If you ask Omarion, he'll tell you that Jermaine Dupri has a pretty peculiar routine in the studio. At times, it may not feel as though the legendary figure is actually working as hard as he can on things. Obviously, that's not the case. His catalogue does all the necessary talking for him. However, his longtime collaborator and mentee Bow Wow just wasn't feeling things when he and Omarion got to work with the producer on Face Off and, in the new episode of the Rap Radar podcast, available via TIDAL, they revealed that JD was given the boot one day into the project's inception.
In their first-ever joint interview, Omarion and Bow Wow linked up to speak about their reconnection on the upcoming Millennium Tour. Both artists are entering their twentieth years in the entertainment industry and their talk with Elliott Wilson and Brian Miller was incredibly nostalgic, including one moment when Bow's relationship with Jermaine Dupri was called into question.
"At one point in time, we were doing the Face Off album and, I'm thinking to myself, 'alright, we gon' have Jermaine [Dupri] do this half and then we gon' work with these other two producers,'" recalled Omarion. "The first day in Atlanta, Bow fires Jermaine. 'No no no, fuck that, we going, O.'" Omarion's impression of Bow had everybody cracking up before the man himself interjected to explain his side of the story.
"We didn't even get a chance to record over a Jermaine Dupri track," said Bow Wow. "Day one, we go to the studio and I believe me, O, and Jermaine were just talking. And I'm just like 'you know, I'm just not really feeling what the fuck you doing.'"
Bow Wow and JD were on their "father-son shit" at that point and things got so heated that Bow and O ended up moving their studio sessions to Los Angeles, finishing up there and still making a hit, even without Jermaine. Listen below at the 11-minute mark.