Seemingly all at once, B.o.B was one of the biggest names in the music industry, and a budding artist with a firm grasp on what was sonically driving chart success. It packed three top 10 hits into the Hot 100 at a time when hip-hop required a deft balance between rap verses steadied by overwhelmingly catchy pop hooks in order to compete with the dance-pop that littered the top of the chart. The project, which celebrated its 10th anniversary last week, is filled to the brim with Atlantic labelmates that were either household names ( Weezer frontman Rivers Cuomo, T.I., Paramore leader Hayley Williams) or about to be ( Bruno Mars, Janelle Monáe). Luckily for him, he was also just a few months away from releasing his already-recorded debut studio album, The Adventures of Bobby Ray, titled after his birth name, Bobby Ray Simmons. The limit on output was unfamiliar territory for the then-22-year-old - between June 2007 and February 2010, he dropped two EPs and a whopping five mixtapes. But between the massive economic recession striking at the time and an early breakthrough hit proving elusive, he moved back home.
His late ‘00s had started promisingly, as he signed with Atlantic Records in 2006, landed a feature in 2008 on T.I.’s “On Top of the World” from the Grammy-nominated Paper Trail - also performing the track at the BET Hip-Hop Awards - and he even made the soundtrack on Madden NFL 2010. He started the decade living in his mother’s apartment in Decatur, Georgia, roughly a 15-minute drive from Atlanta. Ten years ago, B.o.B probably wouldn’t have guessed he’d be the answer to any of these questions, either. Who was the target of Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s diss track “Flat to Fact” in 2016? Believe it or not, that exists, and B.o.B is the answer there as well. Who tapped Morgan Freeman for a spoken word verse - the only vocal recording credit of his illustrious career, per DSPs - in 2012? B.o.B again. Who was the only male solo artist in 2010 besides decade-defining superstars Drake and Justin Bieber to top the Billboard 200 with his debut LP? That’s B.o.B.
There’s something about the wide array of accolades and oddities from the past decade of B.o.B’s life that feels perfectly adept for trivia.