The !grammys: Worst Rap Song - Soulja Boy
When having one of my brief IM conversations with Phil, the subject of the atrocities committed in today’s modern music came up and. Both Phil and I have musical interests that can be represented in the following Venn diagram. Members of the jury, Exhibit A clearly indicates that while Jake may be a poor judge of music, he does know something truly awful when he hears it.
Thus, Phil and I have decided to collaborate on a project called the !grammys, which is read as “notgrammys” using a Borat Sagdiyev accent. These awards will be given out to the truly horrible songs being shoveled as “top 40 hits” to an unsuspecting public. There is no actual prize awarded.
With this, I give you a preliminary set of awards. The following content is for parody purposes only and you should be ashamed if you take any of this seriously.
Worst Rap Song: Crank That (Soulja Boy) by Soulja “DeAndre Way” Boy
The ringtone-esque “Crank That (Soulja Boy)” was actually nominated for Best Rap Song in this year’s actual gramophone-esque awards, which I can only presume was the result of a sordid backdoor three-way affair between Doug Morris, CEO of Universal Music Group; Jimmy Jam, Chairman of NARAS/The Recording Academy; and a major corporate sponsor - let’s say Lowell McAdam of Verizon Wireless, since his company charges approximately 2.49 and 2.99US for a thirty second snippet of the song in question. In any event, it’s safe to assume someone and someone else conducted a Lemonparty with a third participant, eventually achieving a remarkable feat of bribery, collusion and flexibility under extreme duress.
original image by Johnthan “Sesshomaru” Speed, used under CC license.Actually, Johnthan has a fairly good rant about the Grammys which you should check out.
What Soulja Boy brings to the table is a completely illogical entrée of sexual positions set to a horrific steel pan background track. It’s impossible not to wholeheartedly agree with the parents expressing moral outrage this time. Children going around imitating a song that advocates super soaking a ho’ or completing a robocop is more than the usual moral decay that politicians harp on about.
Observe that in a four minute track, DeAndre Ramone Way is capable of humilating a girl in three unique erotic positions: none of which can be found in the Kama Sutra, and all of which require climax to be effective. Even Shiva would be exhausted, and using Cialis is just cheating. To be accurate, Soulja Boy cranks off in or on that ho’ nineteen times, or sixteen if we assume that background vocals are firing genetic material independently.
For pedantic listeners wishing to debate the number of cranking transactions, it is presumed that the segment mentioning roosevelt refers to the urban dance move. This implication is based on the fact that nowhere else in the song features a sexual encounter in a wheelchair. Also noteworthy in this definition is that a ho’ must be involved in the transaction at hand, disqualifying the two alternately accepted definitions of the verb.
If one believes that a song can be judged by its quality of listeners, then consider that Soulja supporters have posted the following text of what is presumably their own free will:
HEY I FINK THE SONG IS GREAT
i love dat song and i love soulja boy.
Calm the heck down people! Of course kids are going to know what these words mean at the right age. They will find out eventually. I happen to think it’s better than the kids dancing killing somebody or robbing a store.
Apart from the aneurysm-inducing application of poor logic in the last contribution, we can already determine that ebonics make a prominent placement in the track without even consulting the lyrics. These aren’t typical Jay-Z Umbrella-style chyeah callouts, though. “Crank That” is truly engineered around the core principles of
- Segmentation into thirty second clips, for ringtones, and
- Alluding to sexual innuendo, yet maintaining ability to be censored for radio play
With these two qualifiers, it becomes significantly easier to understand the obnoxious repetition and call/response structure of the track in question. Ho’, a word that when combined with nappy-headed ruined Don Imus, can easily be interpreted as “Oh”. The action of cocking on a partner’s bitch ass is likewise fairly easily removed, and fails to interrupt the act of catching DeAndre at a local party.
As the song progresses past the unreasonably mass-marketable chorus, listeners are dragged forward to the slurred outro of the first verse. The first three lines are possible to interpret without the aid of a street-savvy teenager, but the fourth provides a confusing and frightening shock to upper class, likely-monocle-wearing citizens.
You catch me at your local party
Yes I crank it everyday
Haters getting mad cause
“I got me some bathing apes”
Individuals who are not attuned to urban culture might incorrectly construe bathing apes as a racial or sexual reference, when in fact it is neither. In a complete about-face from the song’s other incomprehensible inferences, bapes are allegedly a Japanese brand of sneaker that might be preferred by Entourage’s Turtle.
No truly awful rap song would be complete, however, without a catch phrase. In Crank That’s case, cranking is the predominant activity, but YOOOOOOUUUUUUUUU is the gift that keeps on giving - the shaft.
It is my pleasure to award Soulja Boy the !grammy for Worst Rap Song.
Don’t all stampede through the comments section at once, now.
Phil Downey:
Hahahah oh man, nicely done. I can’t wait to do more of these haha.
February 27, 2008, 9:08 amDave Lahn:
This is hilarious. I always love the diagrams.
February 27, 2008, 2:34 pmJake Billo:
I really do need more diagrams. Trying to think of who might be the next target of wrath. Phil, any preferences so we don’t do the same person twice?
February 27, 2008, 2:55 pmUnka Jay (my rapper name):
An insightful analysis of some of the most nihilistic drivel emanating from the rapidly declining Amerikan Empire. Amen.
March 30, 2008, 5:33 amMoving out in a month, this time for real | Bus error: Jake Billo's weblog:
[...] It’s notable how the tone of this site has changed recently. Most of my posts lately are about the wireless industry in Canada, or other hot button topics that I can rant about without giving a personal view of the situation - apart from being a CS student with clearly too many cell phones, today’s posts aren’t all about me. Offtopic: Perhaps this is a good thing: I was accosted several weeks ago by someone I attended high school with and told “I shouldn’t write about people that I don’t know anything about.” The world does not work this way, and “know[ing] anything” was misused in place of “don’t say anything if you don’t have anything nice to say tell me what I want to hear.” Likewise, hilarity would not ensue if I were prevented from writing about Soulja Boy. [...]
April 3, 2008, 1:36 amSearch query: Soulja Boy = moral decay | Bus error: Jake Billo's weblog:
[...] least seven people have recently searched on Google and arrived at this site for the phrase “soulja boy = moral decay.” I couldn’t agree more. Tags: moral decay, query, search, soulja [...]
April 15, 2008, 8:02 pmjordan tibbs:
yo soulja boy whats up your are my favort rapper and iam 17 years old my sex is male and i got gwop just like you you are my hero
April 21, 2008, 11:03 amJake Billo:
I don’t know if that last comment was real or what, but if someone would tell me what “gwop” is I’d appreciate it.
April 21, 2008, 3:55 pmDaniel:
Wow…it just seems like you hate this song just because it has a hidden meaning within the lyrics. I mean, if a rapper can do that and still get airplay on the radio, and not make things seem too obvious, I say that they’re a genius. Soulja Boy is a genius. I don’t know anyone who could pull something like that off so cleverly except for Soulja Boy. Even though the message wasn’t so positive, I think that it was kind of interesting with what he did. I hope that maybe later on in his career he’ll make more songs with hidden meanings, but with a more positive and meaningful message.
July 22, 2008, 7:14 pmJake Billo:
Genius? Hardly. He took a bunch of phrases from Urban Dictionary, cranked them together in a demo copy of Fruity Loops, and then proceeded to blast everyone possible on MySpace with the resulting trainwreck. Sneaking dirty phrases into songs is about the lowest common denominator of rap, and I’d be surprised if he ever produced another successful album.
If success is defined by the likes of Soulja Boy getting contracts, then I hope to some higher power that I’m not the only sane one in the world.
July 22, 2008, 7:35 pm