RIP Soulja Boy’s Career 2007-2008

Soulja Boy better hope that he really does have a deal with YouTube where he gets paid ten cents every time someone comments on one of his videos, as he claims he does, and that he can actually make a shiteload of money from that. Because his career as a rapper is as dead as motherfucking doornails.

He hasn't really had a hit since "Crank That," and it hasn't been for a lack of trying. He's put out at least four or five singles since then, but maybe even more than that, and they've all failed to set the world on fire.

I'll admit, I was somewhat amused by "Yah, Trick, Yah," or whatever it was called. I didn't think it was a good song or anything, but I liked how retarded it was, and the fact that it was actually played on the radio. It was like if one of these lablels had actually signed Eli Porter to a deal, and radio stations started playing that infamous, controversial Iron Mic freestyle.

I spent about two weeks earlier this year yelling, "Yah, trick, yah," at people in traffic, when they would act like little bitches, but then I just kinda forgot about it. And who can even remember what the other singles were from that first album?

But you can hardly blame him for the fact that nothing else on that first album managed to live up to "Crank That." How was he supposed to know that "Crank That" was gonna become such a big hit in the first place? Otherwise, he could have done an entire album of variations on "Crank That." Just like T.I. now has umpteen songs that all kinda sound like "What You Know," despite the fact that I never really got what was so special about that song in the first place. Truth be told, the singles from the album he had out back when I was in college, produced by guys like David Banner and Jazze Pha (I know), are far superior to anything he's done since. And yet, I doubt they were ever even as popular as, say, "Big Things Poppin'." It's funny how that works.

But I digress.

The real test to see if I got pull Soulja Boy is gonna end up a one hit wonder is the follow-up to the album with "Crank That." Which, as far as I know, has yet to be released, probably because the label is waiting for Soulja Boy to come up with another song that anyone likes - not unlike how they tried, and tried, and tried again with Nelly, before they finally just said, fuck it, and cut their losses.

Some shit called the Bird Walk was supposed to be the new "Crank That," but it doesn't seem to have caught on at all. I remember, back when he first came out with it, Soulja Boy was obviously trolling YouTube to try to get people to post videos of themselves doing the Bird Walk, the same way they did with "Crank That." But the only people I ever saw doing it were these Chinese dudes.

Which leads me to believe that Soulja Boy could end up one of these groups that's inexplicably popular in China. Like Cheap Trick, or Night Ranger. Has there ever been a hip-hop equivalent of a group like that? It would suck if Soulja Boy was the first, and maybe even the only one. Because you know China now somehow has all of the money in the world, as evidenced by the ridonkulous spectacle that was the opening ceremony of this year's Olympics, and because I want to see Soulja Boy fail. Miserably. I'm tired of his shit.

In particular, I'm getting tired of this series of videos that he's doing called Rich Nigga Shit, in which he does stupid shit like blow his nose with money and then toss it out in a Louis Vuitton trash can, give bums a huge wad of money to buy drugs, and pay one of his weed carriers $10,000 to drink an entire bottle of Patron. I've posted several of them to my own site, in case you aren't familiar with them. You might want to consult Google. On the one hand, they've been the one thing that he's done that's genuinely kinda amusing. But on the other hand, you can't help but wish he'd fall off his Segway and become a cripple. Just to set things right with the universe. I don't have any problems with musicians becoming very wealthy, but I do have a problem with musicians becoming very wealthy when they suck balls.

Speaking of which, I see Soulja Boy seems to have given up on the Bird Walk, and is releasing another single, "Turn My Swag On," the video for which has been posted today in this site's Bangers section. The song might be the worst thing he's come up with to date. It takes another huge leap forward in bridging the gap between himself and Eli Porter, and yet, it doesn't contain a single line as brilliant as, say, "I'm the best, mayne. I deed it." The video actually draws on his Rich Nigga Shit series, but it isn't nearly as amusing as those videos. I'd rather watch any one of them rather than this actual music video based on them. But I mostly just wish I'd never heard of Soulja Boy in the first place.