“People don’t understand what I did!”: Soulja Boy on how he made history
Since his breakout single ‘Crank That’, Soulja Boy has become one of the most despised MCs in hip-hop. The Atlanta artist is known as a brash, arrogant and flashy character whose material does not match his ego. However, the emcee did have an undeniable impact on rap music.
Songs such as ‘Crank That’, ‘Donk’, and ‘Turn My Swag On’ revolutionised hip-hop with dance-orientated lyrics and simple beats that made his rap style particularly appealing to young children. Produced by Soulja Boy, ‘Crank That’ with its famous “Superman” line, birthed a new hip-hop style reminiscent of Crunk, where the song had multiple calls to action that engaged audiences significantly.
Soulja Boy was a product of the MySpace era and early YouTube age when songs such as ‘Chicken Noodle Soup’ by Young B and ‘Donk’ ran rampant around the internet. They appealed to a highly young demographic that wanted to have fun and learn dance moves instead of hearing gangsta rap.
The Atlanta native undoubtedly made waves when he first arrived. However, many would struggle to say he has done a lot since, except beginning feuds and putting down other MCs on social media. However, during an interview, Soulja Boy suggested that he deserves more respect than he gets for the boundaries he broke, musically. Although he isn’t regularly on the charts, he is still releasing music, and not many artists from the MySpace era lasted into the 2010s yet into the 2020s.
When asked how he began to remain relevant, Soulja Boy emphasised that as a rapper, he is the master of the internet and utilises the tool that shot him to fame in an effective way, explaining, “Just sticking to what I know. I started viral. I started the internet. I started it, so of course, I’m going to be able to keep doing it. I started, I came in on YouTube. That’s how I’m going to go out.”
It is an indisputable fact that Soulja Boy’s entrance into the music scene was during the MySpace, MSN and Limewire era when musicians first began to step onto the internet and circumvent radio. However, during his interview, Soulja Boy suggested that he would be able to live off the internet forever, exclaiming, “I came in digitally. I came in on the internet, so now that the whole rap game is digital, of course, I’m going to thrive in something that I created.”
Of course, Soulja Boy is prone to hyperbole, but he truly believes that his decision to release music on the internet will make him go down in history as the pioneer of using it as a vehicle to promote music. While speaking with Paper magazine, the ‘Donk’ rhymer boldly asserted, “This is a lifetime eternity. This ain’t just with millennials and Gen-Z. No, it’s the year 3000, they still going to be talking about Soulja Boy. Year 4000, they still going to be talking about Soulja Boy.”
He concluded, “People don’t understand what I did. I really made history in our timeline. It’s lit. It’s lit for y’all to be the witnesses. Y’all was alive during Soulja Boy. This timeline is lit for y’all. I made history.”