December 1, 2008

Straight Outa' Batesville

How can you not like Soulja Boy?  Example one, social networking genius: 
How does one go from being a 16-year-old making videos and songs in your bedroom to being a Grammy-nominated cultural phenomenon in one year?
I found out about the Website SoundClick. You’d post MP3s and people would rate on your music and you’d get put on charts. I had this song called “Doo Doo Head.” It was this stupid comedic song — and after a few weeks, it went No. 1 on the charts and everyone started coming to my page looking for new music. Then I found MySpace, made my first page, and linked the MySpace page from SoundClick. Really all my MySpace views came from SoundClick and my YouTube clicks came from MySpace; they fed off each other.
Example two, insightful market analyst: 
You have another new video out called “Turn My Swag On.” What is swag, and how can it be turned on?
I think swag is very important to rappers. It’s the overall appearance and style of an artist — these blue shorts and this blue hat and this $80,000 chain, this jewelry and all these tattoos, that’s swag. Swag defines an artist, period. Lil Wayne has his super-tattooed pierces and dreads swag. Jay-Z has his New York, grown man, Beyoncé and 40/40 Club swag. Soulja Boy is on his dance, down south, young, 18-year-old, comedic swag. It’s really just each person’s personality; if every rapper had the same swag, it would be kind of boring.
If Gladwell doesn't have a chapter on this guy then he's crazy.

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