walking upstream…
Soulja Boy
sourcesCreative Loafing — "Soulja Boy · Vice/THUMP — "The Unlikely Rise of FL Studio" (FruityLoops origin quotes) · Creative Loafing (excerpt from Ben Westhoff's Dirty South) — "The most hated man in Southern rap" (Collipark quotes) · Complex — "Soulja Boy Is the Father of Modern Rap Music" (childhood piano quote)
DeAndre Way got his first beatmaking software — a bootlegged copy of FruityLoops — from his uncle Justin at twelve, and by his teens he was holed up in his father's Batesville, Mississippi living room making 'like 10-20 beats a week' and posting them to SoundClick and YouTube as Soulja Boy. He and his friend Arab filmed themselves running through Atlanta's snap dances before Way built his own: beat first, dance second. 'Crank That (Soulja Boy)' rode that formula to number one in September 2007, self-released, with no label behind it. Atlanta producer Mr. Collipark signed him only after quizzing children at his own sons' T-ball game about who this kid even was. Soulja Boy's melodic, ad-libbed delivery on later singles like 'Turn My Swag On' pointed straight at the internet-rap generation that followed him.
the sound in question
2007
Crank That (Soulja Boy)Soulja Boy
walk the tributaries ↓
Dem Franchize Boyz2000s · Snap music / Hip hop
Before 'Crank That' existed, Soulja Boy's whole online career was teenagers filming themselves doing other people's dances. A 2007 Creative Loafing profile catches him and his friend Arab uploading homemade YouTube clips of the Motorcycle, the Poole Palace, and the Lean Wit It, Rock Wit It — Dem Franchize Boyz's own hit move — months before he built a song and dance of his own around the same premise. The same profile reports his musical influences ran to Atlanta snap acts, Dem Franchize Boyz named first among them.
listen: upstream & here
2006
Lean wit It, Rock wit ItDem Franchize Boyz
2007
Crank That (Soulja Boy)Soulja Boy
listen forPlay 'Lean wit It, Rock wit It' next to 'Crank That (Soulja Boy)': both hand you a beat built almost entirely from claps and a single repeated bass hit, then spend the whole song walking you through a dance move by name, verse by verse. Dem Franchize Boyz's hook is the instruction; Soulja Boy's 'Youuuuuu crank that Soulja Boy' does the identical job a year later, right down to a video built to teach the steps.
Ying Yang Twins2000s · Crunk / Snap music
Mr. Collipark, the producer who signed Soulja Boy, made his name on the Ying Yang Twins — production credit by production credit, starting with their 2000 debut 'Whistle While You Twurk' and running through 2005's 'Wait (The Whisper Song),' a record Stereogum credits with helping 'invent the whole style of snap minimalism.' Collipark's method never changed: 'I want to take that group that's dope as fuck, but can't nobody see it but me,' he told Creative Loafing. He found Soulja Boy the same way, and left him alone the same way — 'I allowed him to be who he is,' Collipark said of signing an artist he barely touched.
listen: upstream & heresource: Stereogum — "The Number Ones ↗
2003
Salt ShakerYing Yang Twins
2008
Turn My Swag OnSoulja Boy
listen forCue up 'Salt Shaker' and 'Turn My Swag On' back to back: both hand the whole hook to a crowd chanting a phrase back over a beat that's mostly open space and one drum pattern. It's the same trick the Collipark stable kept running — a hook simple enough that a room full of strangers can join in before the first chorus ends.
D4L2000s · Snap music / Hip hop
The same Creative Loafing sentence that names Dem Franchize Boyz also puts D4L on Soulja Boy's list of musical influences — Atlanta snap acts, it reports, that critics accused of 'dumbing down hip-hop.' D4L had gotten there first: 'Laffy Taffy,' built on almost nothing but a chant and cheap home-studio software, topped the charts in 2005, two years before 'Crank That.' It's a thinner paper trail than the other two — one reporter's characterization, not Soulja Boy's own words — but it names the record that proved the format could work.
listen: upstream & here
2005
Laffy TaffyD4L
2007
Yahhh!Soulja Boy
listen forSet 'Laffy Taffy' against 'Yahhh!': neither song bothers with a hook you'd call a melody — both just pick one word and yell it over a beat so bare you can count every sound in it. D4L found that a chant alone could carry a record onto the charts; two years later Soulja Boy stripped it down even further, building an entire song out of little else but the title.