Shad Moss, formerly known as Bow Wow, is clearing up his controversial claim that he’s mixed and therefore couldn’t relate to his Black ancestors’ participation in the civil rights movement, leaving a lingering question about his heritage.
“The half-Black thing … this is how this happened,” Moss said on “Ebro In The Morning” Thursday, May 11. “People said I’m not Black. I never said I wasn’t Black. How the whole thing started was from a fan [asking] me a question on Twitter. They said … ‘You know your ancestors were in Selma, [Ala.] and they were marching.’ And I replied back, ‘I wasn’t alive for that, so I only believe what the eyes see.’ … So, I don’t know if my ancestors was really on that bus … as far as I’m concerned, my grandmother woulda told me and my grandmother is not Black. That’s the God’s honest truth. My grandmother [is] Indian.”
When Laura Stylez and Peter Rosenberg asked if Moss’s grandmother was from India or is she Native American, he affirmed both questions, making it unclear if she was both or one or the other.
“I don’t have family from Alabama,” he says. “And I’m one of the ones who never speak up on politics like that. Even when stuff goes down, I get a lot of people that hit me saying, ‘You need to say something,’ … and then it’s like if I say something y’all gon’ kill me for it and if I don’t say something, y’all gon’ kill me for it. But I’m just basing the facts … I wasn’t alive in the early 1900s. … I only believe what the eyes see.”
Ebro asked Moss point-blank if he was mixed, leading the star of “Growing Up Hip-Hop Atlanta” to give a direct response.
“Nah,” he says. “I’m Black with some weird features.”
