Crib Notes

SOULJA BOY: Devourer of little children.

(Photo courtesy Interscope)

One recent afternoon, I was at a laundromat washing my clothes, and I saw these kids running around and generally being a nuisance. They kept repeating the phrase “Youuuu!” similar to how Soulja Boy chants in his ubiquitous “Crank That (Soulja Boy).” They didn’t bother reciting the whole chorus, just the “youuuu” part over and over again.

That particular sound is so memorable that Soulja Boy recycled it for his second hit single, the rising “Soulja Girl.” Near the end of last summer, I bet my boss Rodney Carmichael that Soulja Boy’s debut album would open high on the Billboard charts and then brick like so many others with a ringtone-certified hit have this year (Rich Boy, Mims and Shop Boyz can take a bow) … unless he could dig up a second single. It looks like “Soulja Girl” may be that song.

Musically, “Soulja Girl” is not much. It features a repetitive hook from i15, a boy band ATL producer Polow da Don is trying to foist upon the world, and that unmistakable “youuuu” sound kids seem to like so much. But that seems to be enough. “Soulja Girl” is ascending the Billboard singles chart, and its video is in constant rotation on MTV’s video channels.

Meanwhile, Soulja Boy has become an object of ridicule, much like D4L was last year. When I saw Psyche Origami open for Little Brother at the Earl last Tuesday, DJ Dainja, one of the group’s two DJs, cued up “Crank That.” The entire audience in the sold-out room booed loudly. “All that Soulja Boy shit is dead wrong, but we keep shit dead right,” declared Wyz, the group’s MC, as the DJs began playing the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Dead Wrong.”

Is Soulja Boy the nadir in the year of the ringtone? Perhaps. But you can’t stop the kids from bothering youuuu. For more on Soulja Boy as the pied piper of gullible children, read Mr. Carmichael’s story in CL’s Oct. 4 issue here.

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Tags: Polow-da-Don, Psyche-Origami, soulja-boy.