Hip-hop is dead...Soulja Boy got him some Bathing Apes

First off, just to get it out of the way, I don't hate rap music. It's not my favorite genre, but there are many rap artists that I respect, and there are many rap albums I very much enjoy. However, this isn't real rap. This is just some kid rapping(?) over FL studio-created beats. The reason it's made out to be more than that is because people are too busy doing his dance to actually listen to the crappy music behind it, or the album itself.

So, who is Soulja Boy, and what is that ridiculous dance? Soulja Boy was born DeAndre Way in Chicago, IL. He became famous over the interweb (and eventually the world at large) with his amusing but generally mediocre song n' dance "Crank That (Soulja Boy)". The song is about nothing, but not in the Seinfeld kind of way. Really, it's just a bunch of gibberish about supermanning/supersoaking hos, and cranking that, Soulja Boy. The song is essentially one hook played over and over for nearly 4 minutes, and, eventually, the obnoxious shouting of "YOOOUUUUUUU" (2007's "YEEEEEAAAHHHHHH!!!! OKAAAAAAAAY!!!!!"?) begins to grate horribly. The musical backing isn't much to brag about either...some overdriven and incredibly fake-sounding drums are the basic beat, with some drums of the steel variety adding some slight musical variety. But really, the song kind of sucks.

For the record, I have actually listened to the rest of Souljaboytellem.com, if only just one time. However, I feel that I got the gist of it after one listen (and, moreover, one song). I'm listening to it right now as I type, and it's just as grating as ever. To properly describe the aural carnage that is this album without it degrading into an angry rant, I'll split it up into two parts: a description of the music, and a description of the lyrics.

Let's start with the lyrics. Soulja Boy is only 17, but seriously, he can't rap or even rhyme properly. He sounds like Mushmouth with a cold when he raps(?), and most of the rhymes are simply the title of whatever song is playing repeated over and over with some other ridiculous phrase thrown in to keep time. For example, "Bapes" is pretty much the phrase "I got me some bathin' apes" repeated ad-infinitum, with some neanderthalish verses that generally fit the song's subject thrown in as filler (or maybe it's the other way around).

The subject matter of the album as a whole varies, but it all revolves around how much girls dig him, and whatever trendy piece of clothing he may be wearing at any given time. "Bapes" is about his shoes. "Sidekick" is about his phone. You really can't make this stuff up. "Soulja Girl" is a low-grade R&B track about how to be his Soulja Girl (hint: you have to "step like that"). "Pass It To Arab" is about the simple joys of passing it to Arab. "Donk" and "Booty Meat" are both about women with big butts, and I cannot lie, their unoriginality you can't deny (OK, that was bad). "Yahhh!" is about shouting out "Yahhh!" when people you don't want to talk to get in your face. I find it a tad ironic that he's the one telling me about how to manage my anger, when his album is what's really making me angry in the first place. "Don't Get Mad" tells parents not to get mad because their children love and worship him. "It's a movement," he says. (What I find most disturbing is that the kids sampled in the song are clearly between the ages of 8 and 13; I recall, just a few songs back, he said he got booty meat from fans when he was in the street...are they, too, between those ages? Hmm...) One of the lyrical bright spots on the album is the (intentionally?) hilarious "Report Card", whose hook is "I just got my report card, throw some D's on that." The hilarity of the song stems not simply from the lyrics, but his delivery, which somehow sounds both ridiculously overzealous and lackadaisical at the same time.

But what really lets the album down is the music. Most of the beats are simply the same hook over and over, with many of them either being sampled from Crank That, or just being very similar to it. "Bapes" contains one of the most hilariously intense beats on the record, featuring dark, brooding synths and throbbing bass, but it isn't really catchy or memorable...it just sucks. Plus, it doesn't fit the lyrics at all. You could rap Crank That over "Snap And Roll" and have it fit, since the beats are essentially the same (and, believe me, I tried). "Soulja Girl" and "Report Card" have arguably the two best beats of the record, with the former being relaxed and smooth (yet somehow cheesy), and the latter just being plain catchy, but neither are actually good per se. "Booty Meat" has arguably the worst beat of the album; a lazy drum-n-bass-heavy beat with one of the cheesiest and most painful sounding keyboards I've ever heard making something that could resemble a musical hook, but only on Mars. Any song(?) I haven't mentioned is either terrible or simply forgettable, though most likely the former.

I think you get the point. I hate this record. I hate it a lot. The worst part is that, since he's already incredibly well-known, extremely gullible or simply ignorant folks will actually start to think that this is what real rap sounds like, thereby tarnishing the genre even further. De La Soul, The Beastie Boys, A Tribe Called Quest, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and so many other founders of what we know today as rap, weep.

Track listing:

1. Intro (0:59) N/A
2. Crank That (Soulja Boy) (3:44) **
3. Sidekick (4:00) * 1/2
4. Snap N' Roll (3:45) * 1/2
5. Bapes (3:54) *
6. Let Me Get 'Em (3:22) *
7. Donk (3:13) *
8. Yahhh! (3:10) * 1/2
9. Pass It To Arab (3:58) * 1/2
10. Soulja Girl (3:07) ** 1/2
11. Booty Meat (3:36) *
12. Report Card (3:42) ** 1/2
13. She Thirsty (3:39) * 1/2
14. Don't Get Mad (4:20) *

Souljaboytellem.com (48:25) 2.8/10