by Soulja Boy
Released October 2, 2007 via Stacks On Deck / Collipark Music / Interscope Records
Reviewed October 2, 2022
Top tracks (based on community voting)
Crank That (Soulja Boy) (80%), Bapes (50%), Yahhh! (30%)
It’s genuinely mind-boggling to look back on Soulja Boy’s debut nowadays. Best noted for the indisputably ICONIC “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” Young Soulja had everyone hitting the Superman. Trends come and go, and nowadays there are an immeasurable number of songs that have their own dances attached to them—largely by way of TikTok—but few permeate the cultural fabric in the way this ruled 2007 and beyond. The lead single and one the first real rap hits by way of the internet, its impact is heard even within the album it headlined, with souljaboytellem.com boldly featuring samples or interpolations of one of its own tracks on others. It’s a puzzling decision that happens a bit too often, but Soulja’s debut isn’t completely devoid of creativity. “Bapes'' and “Yahhh!” are the clear runner-ups, respectively, offering some light-hearted fun atop some bouncy snap beats. It’s a sound that encapsulates the whole record, but only really works on a very small handful of them. The overindulgence of simplistic snap beats gets a little tiring rather early on, as Soulja—who reportedly made the entire album on a demo version of FL studio—is about as dead set on one specific formula as Plankton. Now, only a fool would expect any sort of lyrical dexterity, but some tracks might leave you wondering if the aforementioned demo version of FL studio only allowed about 30 seconds of recording per file. We get some decent verses here and there, but Soulja Boy very clearly has much more confidence in his ability to write hooks; if “beating a dead horse” has ever been captured in a song, it’s when Soulja Boy decides to make the hook simply “[song title] (x10).” All that being said, souljaboytellem.com is still a fun record—but really only if you have the nostalgia factor of growing up in the mid-2000s. – Dominick (5.5/10)
DeVán: 8/10 | Daniel: 7.5/10 | Hadley: 7/10 | Jared: 7/10
Cam: 6.8/10 | Dominick: 5.5/10 | Pablo: 4/10
Community Reviews:
Soulja Boy had the world in a chokehold with this one. Pure fun album. – @anyonecandowhatido (6.7/10)
Comments