Introducing ‘exhibit A’ in the case of “Who killed hip-hop”: Soulja Boy’s Souljaboytellem.com.
The album starts out predictably enough with the phenomenon known as “Crank That”: the song that spawned a million and one remixes including “Crank That Aqua Man,” “Crank That Batman” and “Crank That Spongebob.”
Still, I maintained some optimism. Maybe the man who spells soldier with a “J” had some real lyrics to share. A life story of some sorts. You know, something really introspective. Then I was met with tracks like “Sidekick” - an ode to his cell phone - and “Bapes”: a mindless song about the Japanese clothing company.
Souljaboytellem.com continued its descent into my garbage can with increasingly more ignorant tracks like “Booty Meat,” “Don’t Get Mad,” and “She Thirsty.” As for any album gems, they would have to be two tracks that were so bad, they got a laugh out of me: “Report Card” and “Yahh!”
“Report Card” starts out like this:
“You know when you just get your report card, and you have all F’s on it, you just want to take it back to the teacher and say through some D’s on that!”
And continues on:
“Sitting up in the classroom she getting on my nerves / The teacher hollin’ out SouljaBoy do yo work / She talking ‘bout adjectives, pronouns and verbs / I’m knocked out I ain’t hear nuthin’ the class heard / I’m daydreamin’ hard ‘bout that stacks on deck / I don’t know how I’m going to pass my next test / I got my report card I’m like what the hell is dis?”
What’s scary is this very well could become a new trend in hip-hop if not handled properly. Maybe I need to score Soulaboytellem.com in terms that even Soulja Boy could understand: throw a zero on it!
"Souljaboytellem.com" is on sale October 2, 2007 from Interscope.
