Thank Goodness For Skip Buttons
If you've lent half an ear to urban radio in the last six months, you've probably heard "Crank Dat," Soulja Boy's chart-topping hit that has spawned a number of remixes and YouTube videos. The beat is infectious, the rhyming lyrical and the song moves along like a summer breeze. Based on the success of this song, it would be reasonable to conclude that Soulja Boy can bring it.
Hold that thought. A few listens to his full album (the pretentiously titled souljaboytellem.com) tells a different story. Actually, it tells the same story ... over and over and over again. Soulja Boy found lightning in a bottle with "Crank Dat," and has basically tried to replicate that blueprint 10 different times.
But if "Crank Dat" gets tedious after multiple listens, the rest of the album doesn't take nearly that long. The mind-numbing repetition and pedestrian rhymes on songs like "Snap and Roll" and "Yahhh!" will give your "skip track" button a workout. And the product-placement tracks about cell phones and shoes reveal Soulja Boy's true motivations: making money by any means necessary, even at the expense of making good music.
Hear it again and again at www.souljaboytellem.com.