NY Magazine Vulture Blog-Soulja Boy On How One Superman’s a Ho
December 3rd, 2008If pressed to put a number on it, I’d wager that 73 percent of this blog’s readership views Soulja Boy as an avatar for the decline of Western Civ. As Maura rightfully pointed out yesterday, the kid’s got a penchant for inadverterantly sticking his diamond-encrusted Yums into his grill (I don’t want to know that means). And yes, roughly half his singles can charitably be described as migraine rap. But I’ve got to confess a certain partiality for the guy.* How much of it stems from my article on him earning inclusion in this year’s Da Capo series, I’m not sure. Truthfully, I’d probably defend Claus Von Bulow had he helped me get into the anthology.
I don’t exactly bump Soulja Boy regularly, but I enjoy “Crank That” for what it is and find “Turn My Swag On,” disturbingly catchy–though attempts to turn on my own swag have been lamentably dim. But I won’t argue with So Many Shrimp’s assertion that DeAndre Way attempts to make “the hardest, most nonconforming, most singular pop-rap around.” Of course, he doesn’t always succeed, but he’s at least original, which is more than I can say about turkeys like Rick Ross and Ron Browz.
Don’t get me wrong, Soulja Boy isn’t the performance artist of his generation and no sane person could ever mention him in the same breath as Andy Kauffman,** yet there’s something inherently likable to him. In person, he’s much savvier than you’d expect and openly admits his idolatry of Dave Chappelle. I mean, if you don’t think the above video for “Turn My Swag On” was trying to be funny, than you probably voted for Bob Barr.
Either way, I’m willing to cut the dude some slack, considering 18 months ago, he was a 16-year old living in his bedroom in Batesville, Mississippi–a town with just 7,000 people, a third of whom live below the poverty line. Without any help, he became a grassroots sensation, leveraged You Tube better than any other artist and plus, my 10-year old cousin, Taylor, likes him. Yes, she can probably crank that better than me. The interview, can be found at New York Magazine’s Vulture blog, which you should be reading if you aren’t already. B-sides after the jump.
* This does not mean I want to find out what passing it to Arab means.
*MTV call me. I can do better. Promise. I’ll even take back those nasty things I said about Carson Daly back in ‘01. Okay, that’s a lie.
NY Magazine Vulture Blog: Soulja Boy on How One Superman’s a Ho
Download:
MP3: Soulja Boy-”Turn My Swag On”
