![]() Soulja Boy was not the first artist born in the ’90s to top the Billboard Hot 100. And then maybe you’ll film yourself trying to do his dance. But you, the kid Soulja Boy’s age, might shake your head in bemused amazement. Even the adults who grew up with rap music, who love rap music, will hate this song. The song is strange and hypnotic and energetic, and it causes every adult within earshot to seize up with anger. In 2007, you, the kid who got suckered into downloading some Soulja Boy song or other, will watch in amazement as a Soulja Boy song - a song every bit as simple as the one he got you to download - races up the Billboard Hot 100 and becomes the biggest song in America. Soulja isn’t going to make any money by faking his way onto hard drives, but he’s going to make sure that a whole lot of people hear his music, whether they want it or not. But Soulja Boy also intentionally mislabels his own songs and puts them up on sites like LimeWire, tricking other kids into downloading his songs by accident. Soulja posts those songs under his name on every site available to him: SoundClick, MySpace, YouTube. Working on rudimentary beatmaking software in his bedroom, Soulja Boy makes dozens of songs - maybe hundreds of them - and he posts them online every day. The kid is Soulja Boy, and he makes sure that you’ll remember his name because he shouts it all the time. You might be annoyed, but you might also remember that kid’s name. Instead, you might hear some little kid bellowing simplistic rap catchphrases over an even more simplistic homemade beat. But when you download the song, you might discover that the song in question isn’t the big pop hit that you had in mind. A whole lot of peer-to-peer downloading services are out there, and you can just click over to LimeWire and get the song for free just as easily. Why would you? You can have the same song for free. You’re probably not going to buy the MP3 on iTunes, either. That mode of consumption isn’t entirely dead yet, but for your generation, it might as well be. ![]() Naturally, you don’t head out to a music store and buy the CD. ![]() You’re a teenager in 2005 or 2006, and you’ve got a song stuck in your head.
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