DJ Woogie & Soulja Boy: Lord Of The Ringtones

Ask GZA about Soulja Boy and you’ll get the same breakdown as most hip-hop purists, “Fuck Soulja Boy.” While it’s easy to paint him as the poster boy for the fall of hip-hop, it’s just not true. Every artist, radio station and fan is responsible for hip-hop being watered down. They play the friendly records all day, brainwash the kids into liking it and artists trying to eat follow suit. It’s as simple as that. It just turned out that Soulja Boy capitalized the most off of the current contemporary hip-hop climate. Wasn’t nobody hating on the chicken noodle folk as much as they was on Superman boy, na’mean. Both were trash records, but who am I to keep a dude from eating? Especially when he produced and distributed the joint on his own.

Now we have Lord Of The Ringtones (which is actually a genius title for someone like him) and it’s actually not as commercial as his money making single. But that’s not to say that it was much better either. It’s obvious that homie’s not a good rapper. Saying that he’s mediocre would actually be a compliment. But I can’t even say that when he’s writing rhymes like, “I’m ’09 Camaro/Ol’ Eldorado/blew ya swaggers out the chain after I mixed ‘em with the babercue/Soulja Boy’ll tell ‘em car going full throttle dude/hoes in the club, man they straight shakin’ that whopp-dee-dee-doo/goddamn man, um, oh dick/ice on neck with the tats on stat/Soulja Boy’ll tell…” and that’s where he lost me on “Get Yo Stacks Up.” He spit a quick flow on “POW!” but it wasn’t knocking no one on their ass.

The one bright spot was when he went wild with the flow and rhymes on “What You Know” with the rapid spit style over a pretty decent non-commercial beat. And though most rappers who get robbed – only rappers I haven’t heard being robbed is 50, Jigga, Nelly and Biggie – remain coy on the subject and never acknowledge it, Soulja kept it 100 and broke down what happened and how he felt about it on “Go To War.” I give him props for addressing that issue and manning up about it. I mean he probably got robbed by a gang of 5th graders, but still, you’re never too young to pull a trigger. And “Birdwalk” actually had a pretty catchy hook and was probably better than Nelly’s “Flap Your Wings.” But that’s just comparing a strung out Amy Winehouse to a doped up Whitney Houston.

With Soulja Boy what you see is what you get, a kid that’s having fun with hip-hop. In my personal opinion he isn’t trying to go down as one of the best MCs of all time. He’s trying to get money. He has the same mentality as 50 Cent except he’s going about it in a different way. While Fif’s gimmick is to beef with rappers before his release date, Soulja’s money making method is to make cheesy songs that Mickey Mouse and his Mouseketeers can gobble up. And that’s exactly what this mixtape was bar a song or two. It’s a no brainer. The only question I have is, did “I’m Gonna Git You Sucka” influence him to use the name Soulja Boy?-The Infamous O

Hottest Joint: “What You Know”

Weakest Joint: “This Is What You Become”