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.

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