Soulja Boy

"SOULJA BOY TELL 'EM!"

—Soulja Boy, every song he's ever made

Ahh, Soulja Boy. He tells 'em.

Soulja Boy, real name DeAndre Way (also known as Soulja Boy Tellem, Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, and S. Beezy) is an American rapper, record producer, actor, gamer & entrepreneur.

He has released three albums over the past four years,^[when?] Souljaboytellem.com, iSouljaBoyTellem, and The DeAndre Way. Recent^[when?] theories have deduced that the entirety of Soulja Boy may be a Stealth Parody.

The quality of his early music varies from person to person, but for most people he is either completely revolting or hilariously awesome. In any case, it still garnered plenty of radio play in spite of sales for his albums sinking dramatically in comparison. (His first album was #4 in the US, compred with his second at #43 and his third at #90!)

In 2010, Soulja Boy had an interview with hip-hop magazine, XXL. He stated that he wanted people to take him seriously, which everyone can understand... and then he decided to say that he didn't want to be "super-lyrical" like Lupe Fiasco (Soulja's polar opposite in both quality and content) so that people could actually understand what he's saying. Lupe laughed it off... then released S.L.R. (Super Lupe Raps) in which most people agree that he absolutely owns, then utterly destroys Soulja Boy. Soulja Boy is left to reply.

Lately, Soulja Boy can now be found on Twitch, where he is listed as CEO of SODMG Gamers.

Soulja Boy provides examples of the following tropes:

Angrish: "Yahhh!"
Bishonen: Go ask him
Catch Phrase: "SOULJA BOY TELL 'EM!"
- "Swag"
Chorus-Only Song: Most of his songs, but most especially "Crank That" and "Bird Walk".
Media Research Failure: "Anime" includes lines like "Lookin' like Death Note" after repeating that line in reference to different Dragon Ball characters.
Dance Sensation: "Crank That" being the biggest example, followed by the chicken-scratch mimicing "Bird Walk".
Did Not Do the Research: He's technically been known as Soulja Boy Tell 'Em since 2007, after getting sued by Souljah Boy, a member of Mo Thugs Family who'd been around since the 90's.
Don't Like, Don't Read: Subverted; despite dedicating a good fraction of his lyrics to lashing out at "haters", he has stated that he actually pays attention to and considers critical reviews of his albums.
Garbage Post Kid: Supposedly, after he fell for a phishing scam, one managed to get ahold of his Myspace account and do rather unsavory things to it.
Informed Obscenity: A Real Life version that caused major backlash against "Crank Dat". See below. The term it was supposed to mean was something so out there that nobody would ever figure that out unless they were told.
Lyrical Dissonance: Subverted. The song "Crank Dat" was thought to feature a verse about a sex act, due to an urban legend. According to Soulja Boy, the song has no meaning. He found the urban legend rather disturbing.
Lyrical Shoehorn
Money Song: One of his most favorite things to rap about, aside from swag!
Obfuscating Stupidity: Despite being lauded by many music enthusiasts as a moron, Soulja has exhibited a well-developed vocabulary, and even types with perfect spelling and grammar!
Two Hit Wonder: Many people wished -- no, prayed that "Crank That" would be his only hit, but "Kiss Me Thru The Phone" came along and was a hit as well.
One of Us: He likes Death Note and Dragonball Z. He made a song sampling Near's theme and made songs named "Anime" and "Goku". He also likes Naruto, Afro Samurai, Case Closed, and Cowboy Bebop according to his Twitter.
- Although as noted above he does not appear to recognize that the titles of anime do not always correspond to people and even if the name is of an actual character may not know what the character looks like. Unless he considers himself to resemble a spaceship, a notebook or a white guy with vertical hair. And it's entirely possibly "anime" is taken to mean a verb, adjective or noun randomly. Y, Ruler of Time discusses.
  - Claiming to look like people/fictional characters/things you clearly do not look anything like is sort of a joke among certain rappers. Soulja Boy's friend and partner in Narmtastic hip hop Lil B demonstrates this best.
- His recent attendance of the Los Angeles premiere of Fullmetal Alchemist: The Sacred Star of Milos generated photographs with cosplayers, director Kazuya Murata, ADR director Mike McFarland and Vic Mignogna that became subject to small-scale Memetic Mutation.
Rage Quit: Soulja Boy challenged all of Xbox Live to "any" game, claiming to be the best gamer in the world... Except a little research would show that he's actually average, and that's if we're being nice. The ONLY challenge he accepted was from an MTV employee, which anyone who has ever played a video game will tell you was clearly fixed (as in the MTV employeee simply sucked even harder at video games).
- But it gets worse - the ScrewAttack team got word of this challenge, and responded with a challenge of their own - Soulja Boy would play four of the team members, one-on-one in four separate games. It took over two months for Soulja Boy to actually respond to the challenge, but immediately try to change the terms of his challenge to be team matches. ScrewAttack immediately called him out on it, reiterated their challenge & suggested that since they didn't trust him to actually fight them himself and expected him to just deny losing or blame the internet connection should it happen, Soulja Boy travel to SGC (ScrewAttack Gaming Convention) for the challenge. He promptly deleted the YouTube video featuring his acceptance of their challenge and never mentioned it again.
- He makes you pay to join his Xbox Live clan, where all you would get is the privilege of including the clan's initials in your Gamer Tag. Let's just repeat that - He makes you pay money to join his Xbox Live clan, where where all you would get in return is the "privilege" of including the clan's initials in your Gamer Tag.
  - That gamer chair of his was pretty awesome though, right?
Sampling: Of FL Studio's default samples. This makes it extremely easy for moderately talented musicians to almost completely re-create many of his songs.
Small Name, Big Ego: On his now-defunct Deviant ART account, Soulja Boy announced plans to produce his own anime series - with him as the main character - and release it in October 2010 (only five months after he first wrote about it.)
- As it happens, he actually released it in the next month. It had Alfonso "Carlton" Ribiero and MTV News' Sway in it, and it actually wasn't that bad.
- He attempted to launch a line of video game consoles under his stage name in 2018. Needless to say, it was widely mocked and criticised when it became apparent that they were nothing more than Chinese bargain-bin bootleg consoles which came bundled with a cache of pirated game ROMs. Undeterred, he released a new version of the SouljaGame, this time in the form of a PlayStation Vita-esque handheld, and in 2021 announced another Xbox One clone.
  - When confronted about the obvious illegality of the first of his bootleg games consoles, Soulja lashed out with a series of tweets, claiming that critics hate and diss at him for being black, stating that people mock at his products because they didn't want to see "a black man get money". This race card approach didn't obviously sit well with the gaming community, with some comparing him unfavourably to fellow rapper-slash-enterpreneur Chamillionaire (who, unlike Soulja Boy, was far more eloquent and professional in his business ventures).
Stage Names: And he won't let you forget it.
Stuffy Old Songs About the Buttocks: "Donk" and its sequel, "Booty Got Swag (Donk part 2)".
Take That: "I don't want to be super-Lupe-Fiasco-lyrical with n*ggas not understanding what the fuck I'm talking about." Lupe shot back with the following:

"Soulja call it super-Lupe-lyrical/You can't understand me, nor mimic my miracles. All I see is me and I'm a mother-loving-mirrorfull(fool)"

- And in the same song: "Game Over. Body parts."
You!: In the beginning of "Crank That".