This new song by Soulja Boy and 50 Cent is straight violence from start to finish. "You talk shit/I will kick your door ni**a," says Soulja on the first verse of the song. Next, 50 references shooting up some haters with his AK-47. Both rappers talk about how if "fuck with them" they'll hit their "goons" up and "pull the trigger." Soulja Boy talks about "brushing your brain" and the music video features both men clad in bandanas. Soulja Boy refers to himself as a "young ass killa gorilla" at one point, and the chorus is essentially the words "Fuck yo mean mug" over and over again. Who would ever guess a song by Soulja Boy, he of "Crank Dat" fame, would ever be so violent? This song is basically telling all the haters that if they mess around with Soulja or Fitty they're gonna get "dropped." ("High as fuck/Talk shit and you will get dropped," Soulja Boy says so eloquently towards the end of the song). The music video has some crazy things going on, I'm not really sure if they're in a warehouse or something, but its very dimly lit and weird stuff is going on. This song exclusively talks about three things (no exaggeration, I swear): killing people, how Soulja Boy and 50 Cent are above everyone else, and sexual favors from presumably very hot girls. When I first heard this song last week I was shocked that this was a Soulja Boy song, and the music video only further shocked me. I find the song pretty catchy, but the lyrics are so stupid and the subject manner is just downright distasteful.
Seems like it would be easy to make a software program to create modern rap videos. You just need a brief vocabulary list, four different noises on the drum machine, and randomly-sampled half-second video clips of people waving their arms.
ReplyDeleteIt looks to me like the gruesome twosome snuck into a morgue after hours on a drug trip and decided to attach a mic to their egos. This is the kind of thing high school students do. Makes you wonder who their target audience is…
ReplyDeleteAlso, the attractive woman dancing appears to be added as an afterthought: she is alone and dancing in a morgue for some “symbolic reason.” Perhaps Soulja Boy realized he forgot to include women in his video, so he edited her into it so people wouldn’t confuse his video for some kind of necrophilic-homoerotica.
I find it incredibly difficult to associate Soulja Boy with any form of violence. As a teenager, Soulja Boy broke in to the rap game with a series of dance-related tracks that drew strong criticism from hip hop legends and the media as a whole. Although catchy with the teen population, many emcees viewed his work as a sign that hip hop was indeed dead. Despite his constant attempts to distance himself from his origins, it's just not that easy to see Soulja Boy maintaing a thug attitude.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, no one would dare call 50 cent soft or nonviolent. Although his raps have mellowed throughout the years, he never fails to put on a tough image that reverts back to the days of Get Rich or Die Tryin'. His street life before his entry into rap has been well documented and his upbringing in Southside Jamaica, Queens demonstrates that he is no stranger to violence. Not many people have lived to tell the story on how they survived nine gunshots.
All in all, I still think the video is weak. Violence in rap remains only in the underground circuit, so I find it difficult to believe the hype when rappers try to appear violent in music videos. Soulja Boy, please leave the violence to grown ups.