2008's iSouljaBoyTellEm, however, only got one type of review: horrible. PopMatters said,
By now, Soulja Boy is used to hearing that he’s the bane of rap music, a symbol of its over-commercialization and creative drought. On “Soulja Boy Tell’em”, he throws money and MySpace stats at critics: “Three times platinum yeah I broke the record / If you can’t respect that tell me what is you respectin’?” The obvious answers here—creativity, art, passion, and music with a soul—seem to evade Soulja Boy. He’s a depressing end game for any genre: he only sees industry, refusing to place value on anything that doesn’t relate to album sales or online social network popularity. If Soulja Boy could turn a profit from defecating into a microphone and selling it, I’m pretty sure “Shit That” would be his next single.Allmusic called the album "juvenile beyond belief" and SputnikMusic's review ended with the line, "We can only hope that without a hugely successful single to promote it, this album will instantly sink and be forgotten about forever and ever."
So yeah, apparently it sucked. But how MUCH did it suck? The only way to find out, sadly, is to listen to it.
As with every terrible rap record (and really, all rap records, terrible or no), iSouljaBoyTellem, begins with an intro track. In this cause, it's I'm Bout Tha Stax, a 3 minute ode to money and the things it can purchase. Having never listened intently to a Soulja Boy Tell'em track (there's no way I'm going to type that out every time, guys), I was troubled by my inability to understand what it was he was saying. Soulja Boy's delivery is monotone and awful and he doesn't enunciate at all, making it difficult to differentiate one word from another, much less figure out what the words being used are. Luckily, we have the Internet. First, listen to the song and see if you can deciper what he's trying to communicate:
Did you get anything out of that? Me either. Luckily, the Internet is here to help us out.
I'm 'bout the swagg.
I'm 'bout the ice.I'm 'bout to cop me one tonight.
I don't really care da' price, 'cuz my bank roll right.
Ridin' on.
That's how we get it, dog.
South, I was holdin; 45; listen, dog. 45 tickets stashed in my new Dickies, man.
A S.O.D charm piece; man, dat's 50 grand.
Arab tatted up, and got it up the whole guap. SODGang, 6 figures, quarter million.
2nd verse:
I'm 'bout to vote.
I'm 'bout to...this ain't what you thought.
I'm ridin' clean; I got guap
Im doin' me; I'm on the top.
I'm 'bout tha ice.
I'm 'bout the shine.
I'm 'bout tha work.
I'm 'bout tha grind.
I'm 'bout tha get'em, got'em, see'em, saw'em; gettin' every dolla, dog.
When you see me, pop ya colla.
I'ma throw out every dolla.
Soulja Boy is not a scholar, backpack full of a million dollas.
Get'em SOD, we got'em.
Scream SOD, we hollarin'.
Too much swagg, extra ballin. I'ma moneyholic.
You may be wondering what "SOD" stands for or who SODGang is. The answer is more embarrassing than you might expect:
Yes, Soulja Boy has his own clothing line and/or "gang" and/or LABEL. Yes, he has a LABEL. It only has two other artists (both of which ALSO have their own clothing lines), JBar and Arab. I have to share the website's description of SB himself, even though we're getting way off topic:
Soulja Boy Tell’em is many things to many people. Apparently, prophetic is one of them. What began as juddering camcorder footage in his basement mutated into worldwide phenomenon. You’ve memorized the infectious hooks. The dance has been inexorably burned into your muscle memory. And the numbers confirm what you already know: 400 million views on YouTube; over five million downloads of the pandemic single "Crank That (Soulja Boy)"; seven weeks atop Billboard’s Hot 100 singles’ chart; more than five million ringtones sold; platinum status and beyond for debut album Souljaboytellem.com.
Juddering! Anyway, let's get back to the album. The second track, Bird Walk, was meant to be the "Crank Dat" of this record. To wit, it's a mindless, snapping-fingers-beat song that explains the steps to a new kind of dance. In fact, it's really almost exactly the same as "Crank Dat", only it isn't as catchy and the dance is more stupid-looking. Also, it rhymes "touched" with "mugged." And "talk" with "truck." But, of course, it has a music video, so why tell you about it when I can show you?
Not only is this music video preposterous in its assumptions that people enjoy Soulja Boy concerts and that he could play football (what does he weigh, 115 pounds?), it also serves to highlight the fact that SB is a 18 YEAR OLD KID who has been given complete creative control over every aspect of his image.
By the way, I have a feeling that this is going to be a rarity, so I'm going to take a moment and compliment a quatrain of SB's that I thought was actually decent from this song:
My doggie, I'm fresh. Ya, I'm clean, so crispy.
Throwin' dat money like your boy got a Frisbee. Soulja Boy Tell'em, for da kids like Disney.
Chain 360, make your head dizzy.
Not bad, right? Enjoy it, folks. I don't expect much more of that.
Turn My Swag On is the next cut, and, as predicted, it contains no clever verses. In fact, I was halfway through the song before I realized that SB was just taking it off entirely, opting not to rap at all but instead to just kind of lazily croon about his swag and his popularity. There have rarely been more worthless songs than this one. Of course, it has a music video:
That was. Hilarious. Is it possible that Beezy is a satire of the rap game? How cool would that be, right? I can only dream...
Anyway, if you read my review of Bizarre's latest CD, you'll remember my discussion of that point in listening to a bad rap record when you start checking to see if the next song has anyone else on it other than the featured artist. The good news is that Gucci Bandana does, in fact, have two other rappers aside from Soulja Boy. The bad news is that those two rappers are notorious suckMCs Gucci Mane and Shawty Lo. Ugh. SB raps "so much ice, I got you lookin' like Chinese," Gucci Mane literally ends every line of his verse with the word "Gucci" (THAT'S NOT RHYMING), and Shawty Lo's verse was so uninteresting that he repeated the first few bits of it over again at the end because he knew no one was listening.
Eazy, whose chorus includes SB using the word "ish" instead of the curse word it stands for, made me wonder if he ever curses, and, if not, whether that doesn't have something to do with his marketability. I'll keep a close eye on this. I will not, however, keep a close eye (ear) on "Eazy" because it totally sucks and the Soulja Boy calls himself "Scarface Beezy" in it.
JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT IT COULD GET NO BETTER, Kiss Me Thru the Phone, the album's second single, is here to remind you that IT CAN INDEED GET BETTER. By better, of course, I meant "worse, worse, worse." This slow dance song is Soulja Boy's romantic lamentation to his girl; even though we can't be together, he explains, we can still achieve romantic and sexual gratification by means of digital communication. It has a music video, naturally, so I'll just let you draw your own conclusions:
Did I mention this song features the singing of someone named "Sammie"? No, I didn't, and I'm not going to. Also, who raps in THE FOREST?
Booty Got Swag (Donk, Part 2) is apparently the sequel to some other booty-related track at some point in Soulja Boy's past. I don't know anything about that song, but this one is terrible. Also, "her booty so big, I can hang my hang my chain from it" doesn't really make any sense if you think about it.
Rubber Bands starts off with random-background-hype-man yelling "Listen to this track!", no doubt aware of my desire to just turn this crap off and do something productive with my evening. This song contains what I consider to be an interesting (though not thoughtful or well-crafted) line: "Got the Mona Lisa hanging from the wall in my crib / right next to the rubber bands, dog, for real." The juxtaposition of perhaps the most famous painting of all-time (which, of course, not even Soulja Boy's money could allow him to purchase) being hung next to a collection of rubber bands (symbolizing SB's connections to the drug trade, which I don't buy at all) suggests...something. Probably that he's a bad rapper and that I'm overthinking things.
Hey You There begins, as does every other track on this album, with Soulja Boy restating his name in case you forgot it (which isn't unlikely, given how unwieldy it is). Beezy then tells a story about being accosted by a mall cop, which segueways into quite possibly the worst song ever in the history of everything. Soulja Boy affects some sort of weird (mocking white people?) accent and proceeds to whisper-talk, yell nonsense words, call himself "sticky," and fart. He also makes a Rick James reference in the outro. It's pretty surreal, so I'm going to make you listen to it:
I was unsure who was the featured artist on Yamaha Mama, but luckily it began with "Hey, what's up, what's up? This ya boy, Soulja Boy Tell'em." Whew! Thanks, Soulja Boy! And then he gives me his phone number! Are you coming on to me, Soulja Boy? Oh, your "neck tastes like chocolate?" That's...uh...nice. I think maybe we should take it slow, Beezy, especially since you had Sean Kingston sing the hook on this song and he blows.
I was unfamiliar with the Yums referenced in the title of With My Yums On, so I went to Google to find out more. It appears that Yums are "a Dallas grounded and new age lifestyle for footwear and apparel which depicts a southern hip hop and aesthetic look and also a graffiti perspective with an encouragement of art." So now you know. Also, you need to "catch up 'cuz you're still in the mustard." So now you know that too.
Go Head has a guest spot for someone named Juney Boondata, who wrests the belt for Stupid Rap Name Champion, 2010 away from King Gordy. Meanwhile, Soulja Boy "blows [his] nose on the track, so bring [him] a tissue." I'm running out of interesting things to say about how bad this record is, so consider this: "You're lookin' retarded 'cuz you're late for the class."
Gucci Mane returns, bringing along with him Yo Gotti (??), for the comically faux-thug Shoppin' Spree, which, I swear, starts off with the same gunshots from Nas' "Made You Look". Beezy ups the ante by saying "damn" during the hook, but I know better. You're not a thug. You're a fun-loving kid! And I know it because the space where you were going to say "motherfucker" in the bridge was blanked out. After SB brags "You can't say I'm just one hit" (can and will, SB), Gucci does his traditional "worthless thug rhymes" schtick. Yo Gotti is up next and, hey, it's not the worst verse ever. In fact, he's probably the best rapper on the whole CD. To put that in perspective, he would be the 5th best rapper if he was part of 2Pac's Outlawz. That puts him behind HUSSEIN FATAL.
The next track is called...wait...what? It's called Soulja Boy Tell'em, creating a terrifying bad-name spiral if you were ever to try to direct someone to it. "Oh yeah, you should listen to Soulja Boy Tell'em's new joint 'Soulja Boy Tell'em' off his new album iSouljaBoyTell'em. How does it start? With him saying, 'It's Soulja Boy Tell'em,' of course." Luckily, there will never be such a scenario, as the track is abysmal. With its Arthur theme song-esque beat and its missing-the-point rebuttals ("I'm doin' interviews addressin' all these critics / tryin'a under rate me, sayin' I ain't got no lyrics. / 3 times platinum, yea, I broke the record. / If you can't respect that, tell me what is you respectin'?"), this track would be the embodiment of everything that's wrong with Soulja Boy if we hadn't already listened to "Hey You There" earlier.
I'd like to just do a little aside about the last track's status as a diss track. It's clearly directed in part to Ice T, who famously called Beezy "garbage" and told him to "eat a dick." SB accuses a "clown" of dissing him, but then asks "Where is his album sellin'?" He later remarks, "The rap game? Don't get me started. / My lyrics get recycled but yours is just garbage" and accuses "old rappers" who "need to retire" of "copying [his] technique." It's hard to take this as a real diss because it doesn't really address Ice T specifically. Ice T came out with an album in 2006 (the year before SB's debut), making it hard to buy that he is copying Soulja Boy's style and lending little credence to the idea that he (or ANYONE) recycled his lyrics. And if I may chime in on the Ice T vs. SB feud: lame. Ice T, this was a sad attempt to get people to pay attention to your new record. Of course Soulja Boy is garbage. But what does you calling him out on Youtube do aside from make you look old and silly? And, I'm going to be real with you for a minute, man. Yeah, you had an impact on the game and some hot tracks. But you were and are NOT a particularly talented lyricist. Go back and listen to O.G.: Original Gangster again. It's brave and important, but it's not lyrically interesting. And Soulja Boy? Listen, man, you should just feel grateful you got hot for 20 seconds. Your career will probably be over in another album or so.
Getting back to the CD, Whoop Rico is, sadly, not a Rico Suave diss track, but is instead...just confusing. I really have no idea what's going on, but, whatever it is, it's not interesting. It has a video. You figure it out.
I Pray (Outro) mercifully ends the album with a mock prayer for SB's haters, adding sort-of-blasphemy to Soulja Boy's list of sins. The song is about SB's family and would sort of cool if he wasn't so, so definitely an awful rapper. In the middle, he ominously warns us that he "can't stop rappin'." Say it ain't so, Beezy, say it ain't so!
And it's over! Man. That was difficult to get through. It turns out that Soulja Boy is worse than I thought, which seemed impossible a mere hour ago. This record is lyrically WORSE than Bizarre's, but at least slightly more interesting, so it evens out and it gets 1.5 stars, just like his.
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