Soulja Boy Tell 'Em

Top 100 Artist

Nobody knew what to think when Crank Dat (Soulja Boy) blew up all over the radio last year. Stupid, funny, annoying, and catchy as hell all at the same time, Soulja Boy's under the radar single became an overnight sensation. The homebrew dance took streets, clubs, and school hallways by storm, while the accompanying ringtone became one of the most downloaded of the year. As Crank... More >

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Nobody knew what to think when Crank Dat (Soulja Boy) blew up all over the radio last year. Stupid, funny, annoying, and catchy as hell all at the same time, Soulja Boy's under the radar single became an overnight sensation. The homebrew dance took streets, clubs, and school hallways by storm, while the accompanying ringtone became one of the most downloaded of the year. As Crank Dat became the sleeper hip-hop sensation of the year, one question remained in the minds of perplexed listeners everywhere: who is Soulja Boy, anyway?

As it turns out, Soulja Boy is the stage name for DeAndre Ramone Way, a seventeen year old from Misissippi who produced Crank Dat, along with fourteen other songs, by himself on his computer. The budding rapper had been formulating his own music for years, making beats and rapping with his friends on a laptop, delivering his first live performance at an all-ages club at the ripe old age of fifteen. The sudden success of Crank Dat - a song whose monumental popularity was fueled mainly by 10,000,000 hits on the official Soulja Boy Myspace - seems to have surprised everyone but the ever confident Soulja Boy himself, who is hard at work on his next record.

Every other song on his first album, Souljaboytellem.com, plays out just like Crank Dat. Matching a snap-rap beat (think Dem Franchise Boys' Lean wit It, Rock wit It or Laffy Taffy by 4RL) with suburban teenage topics and intentionally silly lyrics, Soulja Boy is the only teenage hip-hop artist unafraid to use Throw Some D's on Dat as a reference to how many F's were on his latest report card. Though some deride Soulja Boy for what they perceive as a lack of seriousness in his music, the teenager has made it clear that he would rather rap about Myspace and school than the drugs and violence that have all but consumed modern rap.

Whether you love to hate him or hate to love him, Soulja Boy has carved out a niche in hip hop that really resonates with youth culture. Yahhh! - a song about skipping school, playing video games, and yelling at people who piss you off - is certainly not going to win a Grammy. Neither is Bapes, a song about shoes, or Soulja Girl, the rapper's half-serious attempt at a romantic song. Some say Soulja Boy is just a flash in the pan, a one-time joke. Then again, that's precisely why the seventeen year old rapper who writes his stage name on the lenses of his sunglasses in white-out is so popular in the first place.

From Discogs:

Born: July 28, 1990, Chicago, Illinois

From Lastfm:

DeAndre Cortez Way (born July 28, 1991 in Chicago, Illinois), is an American rapper better known by his stage name Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, or simply Soulja Boy. In September 2007, his single "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The single was initially self-published on the Internet, and it became a number-one hit in the United States for seven non-consecutive weeks starting in September 2007.

Official Myspace: http://www.myspace.com/souljaboytellem

Read more about Soulja Boy Tell 'Em on Last.fm.

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From Wikipedia:

DeAndre Cortez Way (born July 28, 1990), better known by his stage name Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, or simply Soulja Boy, is an American rapper, record producer, actor, and entrepreneur.

In September 2007, his single "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" reached number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The single was initially self-published on the internet, and it later became a number-one hit in the United States for seven non-consecutive weeks starting in September 2007. On August 17 Way was listed at #18 on the Forbes list of Hip-Hop Cash Kings of 2010 earning $7 million for that year.

Way has currently released three studio albums and one independent album: his debut studio album Souljaboytellem.com (2007) was certified platinum by the RIAA. However, his next two albums, iSouljaBoyTellem (2008) and The DeAndre Way (2010) did not match the commercial success of his debut, the latter only selling 100,000 copies, despite the success of several singles across both albums, such as "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" and "Turn My Swag On" (iSouljaBoyTellem) and "Pretty Boy Swag" (The DeAndre Way). This was mainly due to negotiation problems with Interscope Records which meant a limited amount of records were made available to the public.

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