Soulja Boy - "Soulja Boy Tell 'Em" Review

Soulja Boy: One Pair of Sunglasses, Just As Many Rap Formulas.

The album starts out with a bad Pinky and the Brain reference, and progressively gets more immature from there. Within ten seconds of the album, there's some rhythm problems, and thus is the quality of the production throughout the album.

To be quite honest, on my first listen, I only got through the intro, (aptly named "Intro" to really show how innovative Soulja Boy is), "Crank Dat" (which has all the inspirational power of "The Chicken Dance," "The Electric Slide," or "Macarena"), and part of "Sidekick" (which is as timeless as Air Force Ones, take your pick if you want that to be a shoe or song reference... speaking of which "Bapes" is on the album too). After those three songs, I threw my headphones out of my ear and screamed.

I'm... not... joking.

Anyway, I decided to do my job after that small breakdown.

Not including the intro, it took me one and one-half songs to figure out the patented Soulja Boy formula. An intro which features Soulja Boy blabbing on about nothing eight or sixteen lines for a verse, eight lines for a chorus (which generally consists of the title being repeated over and over), another verse, chorus, either a verse or a bridge (which generally consists of rehashing lines from the song, or saying the title in a different way), then we have some kind of outro where he jabbers on.

By the time I got to "Bapes" I thought the chorus was just going to be Soulja Boy saying "Bapes, Bapes, Bapes, Bapes, Bapes, Bapes, Bapes, Bapes!" This wasn't far from the truth (it was actually "I got me some Bapes today" SIXTEEN TIMES!).

For those of you that don't know, I present... Bapes:

Bapes: The New Crocs, Only Less Comfortable.

By this point, I got a headache, and decided to take a nap.

Throughout the album, I wondered how most of the songs could be translated to a live setting. With the exception of "Let Me Get Em" and "Crank Dat", they can't. The lyrics never have the commanding spirit of even 50 Cent's first album. The beats rarely get past a poor MIDI impression of a real beat, particularly on "Donk" which could have been made entirely on any MIDI sequencer. This isn't to say that a local emcee with a drum machine can't do a great show, (I've seen a duo named Elephant Switchblade have a great show bringing a drum machine on stage with them and putting it up to a mic). There's very little way, though, that the lyrics can be said in any possibly exciting way.

But I digress. The album sucks. Don't buy it.

If you're tempted, remember that he is a man that thinks that this is taste:

Do you really support this?

He also put this in a song:
A clip from "Soulja Girl" (as if you didn't see that title coming).