No, really, Soulja Boy, eat a dick

When I saw, yesterday, that Ice T had issued a drop on some mixtape, talking about how Soulja Boy single handedly ruined hip-hop, and how he should eat a dick, I should have known it would only be a matter of time before Soulja Boy would mount some sort of response.

After all, Soulja Boy has a history of this kind of thing. Last year, when the GZA happened to mention at one of his shows the fact that Soulja Boy is single handedly ruining hip-hop, Soulja Boy had the sheer balls to talk shit about the GZA.

In an interview, Soulja Boy was talking about how he didn't even know who the GZA was, and how Mr. Collipark or somebody had to sit him down and explain to him that the GZA was a member of the Wu-Tang Clan, which was a big rap group back in the 1990s.

In a post here, I suggested that the reason Soulja Boy didn't just log onto Wikipedia and find out for himself might be that he can't read. Around that same time, I had heard (I think I actually read it in Wikipedia, oddly enough), that both him and his weed carrier, A-rab, both failed the ninth grade twice, before finally dropping out of high school.

But it could be the case that Soulja Boy can read, at least on like a fifth grade level, and the reason he doesn't bother to learn about any of the pioneers of this shit until they've made it a point to come out dissing him is because he has no respect for the culture. He just views it as a hustle.

That's basically what I took from his YouTube response to Ice T, which you can check in the Bangers section of this site.

In the clip, Soulja Boy begins by playing the audio of Ice T telling him to eat a dick; and if you notice, he shuts it off right when Ice T begins to run down the litany of pioneers in this genre, who set such a high artistic standard, only to have Soulja Boy and his ilk come along and degrade it to such a degree. Soulja Boy even says something to the effect of, "Fuck that other shit," right as he's shutting it off. (You can check the full audio of Ice T's rant re: Soulja Boy over at WSHH.)

I'm assuming this was less a matter of Soulja Boy being concerned with any time constraints as it was a matter of him not giving a rat's ass about any of the people Ice T mentioned, and, by extension, the argument Ice T was trying to make in the first place, which is that Soulja Boy fucking sucks balls compared to them. Names like Rakim and Das Efx (perhaps no so much Ice Cube) probably flew way under Soulja Boy's radar, and he probably won't learn anything about them unless they, too, tell him to eat a dick. Which they should.

Then Soulja Boy actually pulls up Ice T's page from Wikipedia and begins to read from it. This was surprising to me, in that, the last time Soulja Boy had an issue with an older rapper, he had to have someone explain to him who it was. Could it be that Soulja Boy read my post about his beef with the GZA, in which I suggested he might start educating himself using the world's most accurate encyclopedia? The guy obviously stays up on the Internets, if he was able to have his response to Ice T on YouTube in a mere matter of hours.

Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that Soulja Boy read too far into Ice T's Wikipedia entry beyond the part where it says he was born in 1958 in New Jersey, i.e. like the first sentence. He tries to suggest that Ice T is a T.I.-style faker (aww dang!) for repping California when he's really from New Jersey. Which is just silly, since Ice T has never denied that he was born in New Jersey. The fact that he had to move to California after his parents died, where he eventually fell into a life of crime, is central to the narrative in the guy's music. And Soulja Boy seems especially taken with the fact that Ice is now 50 (yikes!), launching into a bunch of old people which I know some people said they found amusing, but I didn't think they were very funny. The one line I did think was kinda was when he said Ice has a "sherm perm." As you may have noticed by this point, I'm a sucker for angel dust humor.

I posted the clip on my site yesterday, and a few people in the comments section seemed to take issue with the fact that the 50 year-old Ice T was telling the 17 year-old Soulja Boy to eat a dick - which was one of the points Soulja Boy himself was trying to make in the clip. Some even went so far as to suggest that this constituted R. Kelly-style molestation. As if Ice T was actually threatening to hunt Soulja Boy down and mouth rape him. (Which, again, someone should.) You know how mofos like to get all haughty and outraged over the Internets. I think it's obvious Ice T meant what he said in a figurative sense. It's like when a guy calls another guy a fag. It's not that he saying the guy's gay; he just thinks he's less of a man.

Beyond just the man-on-boy sexual aspect of it (no Birdman), Soulja Boy's argument seems to be that Ice T is an old-ass man, and hence he should have better things to do than to sweat what Soulja Boy is doing. This struck me as bullshit for a couple of reasons. First of all, I'm at a loss for what it is that old people do besides complain about young people. And I'm wondering if this isn't as it should be. Ice T is speaking as a pioneer in hip-hop culture, concerned that Soulja Boy is turning it into teh gheyness. You would be upset, too, if you helped build something from the ground up, just to have some kid come along and make it look all gay.

And Soulja Boy's argument isn't even so much that Ice T is too old to judge his music from an aesthetic point of view as it is that Ice T has a lot of money, and hence that should preclude him from giving a shit about the state of the art. As if that's all that matters. You can tell that's what Soulja Boy thinks, since he goes on to talk about how he used to be poor as fuck, living in the ghetto (people in the ghetto have the Internets, and webcams and shit?), and now he's helping to support his mother, and his younger siblings, who are still in school (probably struggling to pass that damn ninth grade). At one point, he actually says something to the effect of, "You've already got a shiteload of money. Why don't you just quit?"

It's no wonder hip-hop is as fucked up as it is, if this is the thought process of kids these days.