Crank Dat White Girl - the Soulja Boy lesson plan

Oct 23, 2007

Crank Dat White Girl - the Soulja Boy lesson plan · by Rafi Kam

On top of the day job, the ohword and the internets celebrity, I try to also “get my parent on” now and then.

My son started kindergarten last month, and over the past weekend we all volunteered at a fundraiser “Scare Fair” for his school. They had me collecting tickets in front of a “Moonwalk” ride, which is basically like a jumping castle for kids to expend all those high fructose corn syrup calories they’ve been inhaling.

The photo above isn’t the actual one I stood in front of on Sunday but it’s close enough to give you the idea.

All I had to do was collect tickets and make sure the kids were in 3rd grade or up – younger kids were directed to another moonwalk 200 feet away. I hadn’t realized that I was going to have to take shit about this rule from about 50 parents in the span of my 90 minute shift. But hey that’s white entitlement for you. Even a rule made to protect their toddlers from getting trampled by hormone-addled middle schoolers is a point of contention for these nudniks.

Speaking of entitlement, a few of the aforementioned middle school girls were jumping to their heart’s content when the event’s dj put on “Crank Dat Soulja Boy”. There was an audible excited gasp from within the inflatable tent. I looked in and saw little Ashley (we’ll just call her that) pointing out their good fortune to her friend.

As if called to duty, the two girls both stopped the high jumping, adopted serious expressions (the better to remember the routine) and proceeded to Crank Dat Soulja Boy. Their innate lack of balance and rhythm was further challenged by both the puffy cushions they danced on and the distractions of the younger girls, who were too young for the YouTube rite of passage and continued to just do some regular jumping.

Ah, the mythical 13 year old white girl. She is “the difference between being famous and being a superstar” and no one is more aware of that right now than rapper/writer/producer/rich young motherfucker DeAndre Way aka Soulja Boy.

At Black Web 2.0, Lynne d Johnson writes that Soulja Boy is “the best example [she’s] seen of an artist utilizing the power of the Web to break his career” and “the closest you’re going to get to a case study right now” for what she calls Hip-Hop 2.0. I’ll nitpick here but I don’t think it’s accurate to call him the only case study as there have been many indie acts and labels using social networking, web video, and viral media attempts to build buzz and community. It’s a flawed student who only looks at the one breakout success as their case study.

If Soulja Boy is our case study, what do we learn that we can apply to other indie hip-hop acts?

Lynne says:

The truth is, all the work on YouTube, MySpace, et. al. paid off for this cat.

But thousands of artists are doing “all the work on YouTube and MySpace”, why don’t they break to this level?

I’m sure the fact that he created dance lesson videos didn’t hurt either.

“Didn’t hurt?” That’s your case study?

Convergence Culture offers up:

In a move that was described on Artist Direct as “Hustling 2.0,” Soulja took advantage of the fact that people were already downloading material from other artists, renaming his files as popular songs in order to spread his content.

Great, encourage more shady promotional methods. The world needs more spam!

Many groups have taken to social networks and video sharing as a means to self-promote, but, as anyone who has ignored dozens of friends requests from bands on myspace.com knows, the effectiveness of all these efforts is inconsistent, at best.

Hm, but isn’t that “all the work on YouTube, Myspace” that we just heard about. The “work” is tediously consistent in either case but in cases that aren’t surprising breakout successes the “effectiveness” of the work is inconsistent. Maybe it’s not the quality of the social networking that’s the difference-maker. All the Web 2.0 hype and efforts in the world cannot make a hit.

Part of the problem is that there isn’t a significant shift in the way in which the content is presented. Bands produce the same types of videos and promotional materials, except now they’re accessible through YouTube instead of MTV. There’s little consideration of the unique expectations and practices within these spaces… Soulja Boy has a number of videos which use the particular video blogging aesthetic of YouTube to help brand him as a personality.

This is a valid point, as is Lynne’s when she mentions the smartness of the dance instruction video that dropped after the initial buzz and no doubt helped add to the tidal wave of copycat dance videos. These are fine takeaways from the Soulja Boy case study but is it going to be any use for your average indie musician who are just looking to use the technology to get their music an audience?

Because to make this stuff go viral, a desire from the audience has to be there. With a “try this dance” video, the marketing is built into the product. If kids think it’s cool, they’ll spread it. If kids think it’s really cool they’ll make it about them and create their own videos. Hey, entitlement exists – so use it! Get a few hundred 13 year old girls pushing your dance and you are set.

But how is that going to help the more likely musicians reading this – the lyrically lyrical underground mc? Older fans have their own sense of entitlement (noz: “real heads are haters by nature”) but the way it manifests is in opposition to the entitlement of 13 year old girls.

13 year old white girls are easily moved to broadcast their opinion without shame to a world that they don’t yet realize doesn’t bend to their every whim. (I say yet but based on some of the moms mentioned at the beginning of this piece maybe they never realize this. Scarier thought: what if they’re right and the world does bend to their every whim?) Your average older hip-hop head is not easily won over and has retreated from the world instead of broadcasting to it. I look at myself – I’m much more cranky dad than “crank dat…”

Which is why Chartreuse said:

You can’t target 13 year old white girls. If you do you will eventually lose because they are fickle. (See Backstreet Boys/NSync/98degrees, etc.) You have to first have your core audience to fall back on and all the fans you managed to get because of the media push caused by the 13 year old white girl phenom.

Here, here!

So what does the Soulja Boy case study actually teach indie musicians who still want to stay authentic and aren’t currently creating ringtone rap or new dance hooks?

The web is not like old media – it’s free and can be used to spread your music. (what, you heard that one before?)
You can’t start a virus without a good germ. (whatever you want to say about the quality of “Crank Dat…”, its ability to spread is top-notch)
If you can get your fans to do your marketing for you, you really win (what, you heard that one before too?)
If you want to become more than famous (infamous like El Guapo), you need to find a way to get some of your shit loved by 13 year old white girls. If you think this doesn’t apply to real hip-hop just ask LL Cool J, Wu-Tang Clan (where would they be commercially without Method Man), 50 Cent (go shorty, you’re a pre-teen), Jay-Z (it’s a hard knock life indeed) or even Slug.

Comments for "Crank Dat White Girl - the Soulja Boy lesson plan"

“50 Cent (go shorty, you’re a pre-teen)”

I love it. I too am a cranky dad, but I also blog. I’m tempted to leak a Britney Spears CD just to get some hits.

Profiting off the spoils of others should be Hip-Hop 3.0. Or is that 1.0?

— khal Oct 23, 10:25 AM
You make all great points here. And I agree where you disagreed with me. You map out an awesome lesson plan. And no, Soulja Boy isn’t the only example. The Board Bangers went platinum on the Internets and I never heard one of their songs before, but they made their own fandom. As has Tyga, cousin of Travis from Gym Class Heroes. I suppose I wasn’t fair in saying the “only” example. I didn’t put the case study in context of its history — so I left a lot of artists out. You take this to the next level. Thank you.

— Lynne d Johnson Oct 23, 12:12 PM
Didn’t Stallone’s Carter take it to the next level?

— sankofa Oct 23, 01:41 PM
nice three amigos reference. good read.

— Lee Oct 23, 02:03 PM
Lynne,

Thanks for the feedback.

Despite my nitpicking that case study sentence, your post gave me a great point of departure.

Sankofa,

I didn’t see either version of “Get Carter”. But I’m sure that even if I had, I still wouldn’t know what you’re talking about. And I love you for that.

khal and Lee,
Thanks

— rafi Oct 23, 02:18 PM
Nice work Rafi. It’s funny, I was having the same convo about the 13 yr old girl phenomenon with my friends just the other night. I really think 50 established the blueprint for post-millenium major label hip-hop and the linchpin of that strategy is winning the approval of the Junior High set.

And btw, “Go Shorty, You’re a Pre-Teen” is classic.

— Jeff Oct 23, 03:36 PM
The instructional video enabled the dance to spread among the 13 yr old White girls (13YOWG). because 13 year old Black girls don’t need instructions to know how to do that dance.

— Hashim Warren Oct 23, 06:40 PM
Jeff and Hashim,

I agree with both of you.

And Hashim – I’m digging the 13YOWG acronym!

— rafi Oct 23, 06:53 PM
When I was working at The Source (‘98-2000), it was explained to me that their primary, target audience was 10 year-old boys. This explains the appeal of misogny, immature crassness, cartoonish “gangsta“isms, the appeal of those awful “pen & pixel” ads that were so prevelant at the time, etc. etc.
Now, hip-hop is finally taking the preteen girl market head-on, too (no, “I Need Love” and the Wee Papa Girls weren’t really making so much of a dent in that market back in the day).
On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see hip-hop expand from being essentially a boy’s club to include both genders. But until this trend substantially spreads into the smaller, adult-oriented hip-hop scene, it doesn’t make much difference to me.

— Werner von Wallenrod Oct 23, 10:42 PM
Rafi, you make a number of very good points. Like you, I’m not convinced that getting big on the web necessarily means sustainable success when translated into traditional media channels. I actually talk about this in a recent post in the Convergence Culture Consortium blog about the Clip Star competition.

I would just like to note that I am coming from it from a very different perspective than the one you’re proposing. For me, Soulja Boy is not so much a case study (and certainly not a definitive one) nor even a performer/media property, but a phenomenon that has highlighted a number of what I consider to be interesting social and participatory audience practices. What for me differentiates what Soulja Boy has done versus other groups which seem to have been less “effective” in mobilizing social networks as promotional tools has a lot to do with the fact that many groups that I’ve seen have a tendency to use social networks simply as a alternative distribution platform. That is to say, they send out notifications and post content, but are essentially working on a tradition model of “broadcast” distribution. What Soulja Boy did was not about the technology itself, but about foregrounding participation and engagement in a social practice through the use of technology, which is what helped it catch on. As much as you might make fun of the 13-year-old girls doing the dance, the fact remains that the dance and the social and creative element it promotes is central to what makes Soulja Boy so pervasive, and it has appealed to a wide range of communities.

(Incidentally, it was for this reason that I mentioned Soulja Boy hiding his songs under other titles — I wasn’t promoting the spamming so much as I saw it as an instance of his familiarity with the practices common in the space.)

— Xiaochang Li Oct 23, 11:22 PM
Xiaochang,

I was definitely reckless in conflating your post with Lynne’s for my critique. And I apologize for that. Really I enjoyed your analysis as well as the reading of the Soulja Boy video. I’ve been a reader of Convergence Culture ever since you guys covered an article of mine in May 06.

And I agree with you that the success of the user participation in spreading the message is unique. Perhaps almost to a point of questioning the authenticity of its take-off velocity?

I saw the lonelygirl15 reference at your site so I know the idea has been breeched for you before. A friend of mine who runs a large music retail business in LA points out that this single was all over commercial radio months before Soulja Boy was supposedly signed. According to the same source, no matter how much user demand for a song, commercial radio in major markets = big money which basically means industry backers. If you believed in the outcome, it wouldn’t take much to get the ball rolling on something like this….

On the other hand I like to think I’m not quite that jaded. I’ve seen a wave of user video participation even in the pre-YouTube era with my friend Cas’s crying while eating site (and I’ve been part of a few memes myself) so I know that the magic can happen organically.

It’s fascinating to me to look at what goes viral and what doesn’t and to hypothesize on the reasons.

By the way although I make fun of the 13 year old girls, it’s only out of envy for their position of privilege. Unfortunately my audience probably averages twice their age and mostly male.

I think the filename thing sort of adds credence to the possibility of a viral backer. It’s evil and to me seems terribly inefficient – both are traits that make me think corporate involvement.

— rafi Oct 24, 12:35 AM
Rafi, no worries. If I sounded at all defensive, I didn’t mean to. These are issues that interesting me and I enjoy discussing and debating them.

Like you, I’m not totally certain of Soulja Boy’s “authenticity,” and while it certainly is a concern for his future success or lack thereof, it wouldn’t detract from the phenomenon. Though, maybe it’s my lack of experience with the music industry, but the mislabling of files is actually what makes me think he’s for real. Wouldn’t using “piracy” tools to distribute and promote stuff be extraordinarily bad PR given the record industry’s position on fire-sharing?

But yes, the fact that the song saw a lot of radio play is really suspicious, though it really isn’t something I’m equipped to comment on.

We’re really interested in questions of what viral is and how it works here around the consortium, and we just launched a project that is intended to really address these questions and tease out what the modes, strategies, and aesthetics of viral-ness really is. Some of it will very likely make it onto the blog as we continue to work through these questions.

— Xiaochang Li Oct 24, 03:17 PM
Rafi and Xiaochang,

I too am suspect of the authenticity. But here in New York City, several tracks get leaked to radio that do not appear on any album. But does that track make the rounds nationally? Not often. Which is why it’s suspect.

But that’s really not the issue that I addressed. Whether the story of discovery is authentic or not, the model still proves the power of the Web in breaking an artist. The viral nature of the dance lesson, and its ability to catch on within the demographics that you describe, had a lot to do with the success.

We’ve seen other YouTube videos for other tracks and we’ve seen them all become viral. “Walk It Out,” for one. But this one somehow, went into areas the others had not. This one garnered Web traffic the others had not. This one produced Soundscan numbers this one had not.

I’m not holding this up as a cultural or social study, inasmuch as I’m raising a banner for its marketing prowess.

I am learning a lot from this overall discussion though. And perhaps the marketing aspect can not be separated from the sociocultural. Not sure yet.

You’ve both left me with a lot to chew on.

And Xiaochang, I too have been reading the work of the Consortium for a while. I first became interested in C3 when an acquaintance, Beth Coleman, joined MIT. Because of this, I’m deeply interested where you guys go with defining viral.

Best,
Lynne

— Lynne d Johnson Oct 24, 10:42 PM
This is too funny and that would have totally been us knowin’ all the steps…
ps…are you a D.I.L.F?
Love Lady Chavez and Fluffgirl

— Lady Chavez and Fluffgirl Oct 26, 09:30 AM
Whether I can be classified as dilfy depends greatly on your personal opinion about body hair.

If you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to make love to a gorilla, I’m your huckleberry.

— rafi Oct 26, 02:08 PM
Why can’t Nyoil blow up like Soulja Boy on the web? The latter is not Hip-Hop 2.0 he’s SHIT-Hop 2.0. The topic matter on his album is so idiotic I can’t even believe a teenager wrote it let alone a five-year-old.

— DJ Flash Oct 30, 04:54 AM
first of all never do the soulja boy again because I dont know where u learned how to do the soulja boy bu u dont know how to do the soulja boy u guls are so butt

— allyson Nov 5, 12:23 PM
first of all never do the soulja boy again because I dont know where u learned how to do the soulja boy but u dont know how to do the soulja boy you gurls are so butt

— allyson Nov 5, 12:26 PM
EWWW that was discusting, for a black girl to c dat it is just horifyen.. they need some help soon!!!!!!!!!!!! never again u eediot white gyal

— None of ur business Nov 5, 05:52 PM
great stuff Rafi. The question I’ve been asking is that White Out on his sunglasses? Or can I buy a pair like that somewhere next to the inncense and vitamins at the Kwik-e-mart counter?

— CommishCH Nov 5, 06:44 PM
watz up

— cash money Nov 6, 01:37 PM
you suck ass bitch

— carlos Nov 7, 10:53 PM
wats up cuzz souljia boy is that nigga he needs to let me rap plus my shit is tight

— cameron barnes Dec 3, 02:58 PM
to all of you suck yr munz
pussy
e16 n e6 n e1 n7
e16 e16 e16 e16 e16
brapp

— zakir Dec 12, 01:27 PM
i love girls

— bahi boss Dec 21, 01:30 PM
get me some gril phone number

— tykeem May 23, 10:20 AM
ilovemodels

— montrey Nov 29, 04:25 PM