Idolator: Soulja Boy

Anybody Know If Soulja Boy Stayed In To Watch TV Last Night?

Maura Johnston — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 08:53:00 EDT

So here's a little conspiracy theory for you: What if Ice-T started that whole verbal slapfight with Soulja Boy last week because he wanted to put the word out there that he was ready to feud with anyone .... including Joan Rivers, who led the family opposing his clan on last night's Celebrity Family Feud? Of course, Ice kept it real by working blue on the first question, but you do have to admit that "name something that's slippery and hard to hold on to" is something of a Match Game-sized opening for that sort of thing. [RedLasso]

The Ice-T/Soulja Boy Feud Gets Animated

Maura Johnston — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:15:00 EDT

Ice-T may be slowly backing away from his fight with YouTube's top rapper/shoe mogul/dance-craze originator, but that's not stopping Soulja Boy, who apparently has a lot of time and bandwidth, from releasing yet another clip going off on his elder and any other "50-year-old" types out there. And this time, it's a cartoon! Really, if you want to get to the only part of the video that sort of goes beyond "LOLd" jokes, just fast-forward to around 4:10 and watch as Soulja Boy uses some video-editing trickery to come up with a new dance, the—wait for it—"Crank That Ice-T." I predict that 10,000 tributes to Ice-T's breakdancing style will be online by sundown. [YouTube]

Ice-T Backs Down Further As Kanye Weighs In On Soulja Beef

Anthony Miccio — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Oh, this Internet age! The Soulja Boy/Ice-T beef may already be over before a single battle track could be laid down, judging by Ice-T's interview with AllHipHop.com. "Soulja Boy, you killed hip-hop" has now become "Soulja Boy, you could try harder," as Ice-T acknowledges the long list of corny-ass dances in hip-hop's career, including Ski Love's "Pee Wee Herman," the video for which just happens to include Ice-T. "That s**t was corny too...so I have a corny strike on my resume. But now it seems like the game is being overtaken by less skillful Hip-Hop. And you notice Joe Ski didn't have a real long career in Hip-Hop." But while he may accept Soulja as an underage Joe Ski, it's going to take a lot more than Kanye West references a bonus track on It Was Written... to make Ice-T think he's the new Nas.

From Kanye's blog (which is updated with impressive frequency — eight posts on Sunday alone!):

Soulja boy is fresh ass hell and is actually the true meaning of what hip hop is sposed to be. He came from the hood, made his own beats, made up a new saying, new sound and a new dance with one song. He had all of America rapping this summer. If that ain't Hip Hop then what is? A bunch of wannabe keep it real rappers that ain't even relevant, recycling samples trying to act like it's 96 again and all they do is hate on new shit? N***as always talk about the golden age but for a 13 year old kid, this is the golden age!!! That song was so dope cause everything he said had a hidden meaning... that's Nas level shit... he just put it over some steel drums which is also some Nas shit if you had the 2nd album cassette with the bonus track "Silent Murder" on it. In closing... new n***as get ya money$$$$$$$$$$ Keep this shit fresh and original.... ain't no fuckin' rules to this shit and that's what real hip hop is to me.

Responds Ice:

I respected his comment. At least the discussion has begun. But the discussion won't go on if people feel I'm hating. It's more about Hip-Hop. When you go in the studio, you're supposed to really try and do something. It's not someone's fault they got a hit record, but when you try to compare that to Nas, you're gonna get a dramatic response from a real Hip-Hop n***a.

What, like an incredulous YouTube? The shaking of a cane? Maybe a subliminal dis on SVU?

Ice-T Explains Soulja Boy "Beef" [AllHipHop]
Joe Ski Love Peewees Dance [YouTube]
I AIN'T GOT NOTHING AGAINST ICE T OR NOBODY FOR THAT MATTER BUT I GOTTA RIDE WITH SOULJA BOY.. [Kanye West's Blog]

Grandpa Ice-T Reaffirms Soulja Boy's Wackness

Anthony Miccio — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 10:00:00 EDT

Ice-T would like to humbly apologize for telling young Soulja Boy to eat a dick. "Truthfully, a brother of my caliber shouldn't be talking down on a youngster your age." Wait for it..."But as far as your music goes? It's garbage."

Here's a list of Ice-T's issues with Soulja Boy.

• Unlike Young Jeezy, TI, Lil Wayne, Lupe Fiasco and Ludacris ("cats that take time to go in the studio, and really write something"), Soulja Boy doesn't give 110%. "This ain't no old school new school, this ain't no east coast west coast drama, you dig?

• That "Superman" bullshit is wack.

• Instead of taking the criticism and respecting his elders, Soulja Boy had the audacity to reply to Ice-T's mixtape outburst by LOLing at his Wikipedia page and screaming "dude, you old!" "You was supposed to take that!" says Grandpa Ice, since dissing Ice means having Hip-Hop itself on your ass.

And really, that's why Soulja Boy is pretty smart to keep mocking him. While the Ice-T of Rhyme Pays took pride in his knowledge and would have found "Crank That" embarrassing, he would be bummed to hear his older self is bitching about these young kids with their stupid dance moves and lack of respect for their elders. From his own experience with old-ass fucks, he know there's no point in trying to upbraid a youngster for his foolish nihilism, especially in hip-hop. We may roll our eyes when Soulja Boy confuses "Cop Killer" with "Fuck The Police" and says that "Wal-Mart wasn't even made" when Ice-T was born, but gleeful irreverence has always been one of rap's greatest weapons (i.e. "there's three of us but we're not the Beatles"). Ice should just sit back, enjoy his cake, and wait for the four elements of hip-hop culture to exact the same karmic justice on Soulja Boy that they did to Wacky D and Sunshine.

Solja Boy- Ice T APOLOGIZES!! to Solja Boy [YouTube]
Wacky D And Sunshine [YouTube]

Soulja Boy Fires Back At Ice-T The Only Way He Knows How: Wikipedia Citations

Maura Johnston — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:00:00 EDT

In case you don't have the stomach to watch Soulja Boy's expletive-laden, nearly eight-minutes-long despite edits response to Ice-T saying he ruined hip-hop forevermore, let me sum up its two major arguments. No. 1: "YAHHH OLD YAHHH." (That's a paraphrase.) No. 2: "How are you gonna make a song called 'Fuck Da Police,' then 35 years later, your ass is playing the police on TV?" (That's a direct quote. Personally, I think a youuuuuuuu would have sufficed.) P.S.: This should go without saying on any YouTube clip, but seriously, if you want to retain your faith in the future of this planet, don't read the comments. [YouTube; ht PTW / Earlier]

Ice-T: "Soulja Boy Killed Hip-Hop!"

Anthony Miccio — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 12:30:00 EDT

Just in case you thought "farm boys from Iowa" contributing to Salon were the only people livid about the effect of Soulja Boy on hip-hop^*, SVU veteran and creator of my favorite rap album of all time Ice-T wants you to know that he has no respect for the snap superstar. "We came all the way from Rakim, we came all the way from Das EFX, we came all the way from motherfuckers flowing like Big Daddy Kane and Ice Cube, and you come with that Superman shit? That shit is garbage."

Almost as if he knew the attack was coming, Soulja Boy released a new "freestyle" earlier this week, allegedly delivered as payback for half a million visits to his YouTube page. Watch as he brilliantly rhymes "on" with "on" and "on" with "on."

Is there a reason he keeps looking off to the side between each line? Or why he stares to the left when zooming through the speed-rapping part of this "freestyle?" At the beginning of the clip we can see a video game on a giant TV screen to his right, and the same image appears to be on the computer he starts the music on. So did he have some giant digital cue cards set up for the "freestyle?" Or is he just simply checking on the game? Either way, I doubt this will help him regain Ice-T's respect.

Ice T Says Soulja Boy Killed Hip Hop [YouTube via RealTalkNY]
Soulja Boy - Another Freestyle 500k Part 5 [YouTube]

^* I'm still boggling over the phrase "since when did young black men, heretofore the arbiters of pop culture, become so lame?"

The Top Five Lines From Soulja Boy's New New Single

Maura Johnston — Thu, 08 May 2008 12:45:00 EDT

Soulja Boy's third new song of the past week is "Go Hard," a boast that manages to dis Kanye West, refer to any other MCs out there as "ninja turtles," and not use the "Crank That" steel-drum beat during its entire two minutes and 43 seconds. Helpfully, Soulja Boy has cut and pasted the lyrics in the YouTube "about" box, and, well, between reading these words and listening to Tokio Hotel, I'm starting to wonder just what this world is going to be like when I hit retirement age. In case you don't want to stream the entire song, I've listed the five "best" lines from the track after the jump.

5. "My Lyrics sick, tell my verse to get well soon."
The chorus, on the other hand, can stay in the ICU.

4. "My house too nerdy I call it Steve urkle."
Sic, natch.

3. "My flow Wifi connection stay connected like bell south."
Uh...

2. "Throw my balls at yo girl she call me payton manning."
Wouldn't Eli have been a better choice, what with him being the younger brother and winning the Super Bowl and being kind of an idiot savant type and... oh, forget it.

1. "I call my weed purple. Similar to the film"
Purple Rain? The Color Purple? The Purple Rose Of Cairo? Did that Harold And The Purple Crayon movie ever get made?

Go Hard [YouTube]

Soulja Boy Is Not Wasting Any Time In His Quest To To Shake That "One-Hit Wonder" Tag

Maura Johnston — Mon, 05 May 2008 13:45:00 EDT

Apparently the call-out research on "iDance," Soulja Boy's last new single (you may remember it from, um, Friday), rushed in over the weekend and was overwhelmingly negative, because the tenacious young MC has already put out his next new single, "She Gotta Donk." Soulja Boy seems to be going the "When in doubt, sing about women with nice asses over a really sparse beat" route on his new track, a decision that will no doubt cause a lecture from 50 Cent to be sent his way soon. [OnSmash via ProHipHop]

Four Items Of Note About Soulja Boy's New Single

Maura Johnston — Fri, 02 May 2008 15:15:00 EDT

• The song is called "iDance." Not "I Dance." (And the album it's on will be called iSouljaBoy, not, as I thought when I was told about it last night, I, Soulja Boy. The latter sounds a lot more majestic, I have to say.)
• The kids now use "YouTube" as a verb. Given that the song's title is spelled "iDance," I'm guessing that S.B. means to also say "iYouTube," a bit of grammatically horrifying cross-purpose branding that is no doubt already giving Apple and Google's marketing teams a collective iHeadache.
• The song features the line "guess who's not a one-hit wonder." Yooooooouuu keep telling yourself that, kid.
• But it's pretty much just an electro remix of "Crank That," complete with steel-drum beat, "Yoouuuuuuu"s, and references to Supermanning that ho. [YouTube]

Soulja Boyz II Men: From Jokey "Bad Idea" To Jokey, Slightly Better Idea

Maura Johnston — Tue, 15 Apr 2008 16:00:00 EDT

Those of you who enjoyed the snippet of Soulja Boyz II Men that was in the Real's "Failed Ideas In Hip-Hop" video earlier this week may be thrilled to know that the comedy duo has come up with a puppetry-employing video for the track—and while, like many mashups, the song falls apart a bit on the verses, the chorus, and the thought bubbles employed by the various characters, more than make up for that cacophony. [The Real]

Soulja Boyz II Men: An Idea Whose Time Has Come?

Maura Johnston — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 10:30:00 EDT

This video of "failed ideas in hip-hop" has its moments—the RickRossRoll being one that some enterprising YouTuber should seize upon immediately—but the last 30 seconds, which are taken over by an unholy wedding between "Crank That" and "End Of The Road," may be the most sublime sound-collision I've heard since Marnie Stern got her fretwork in Lil Mama's pot of lip gloss. [YouTube]

Soulja Boy has said "YAHHH TRICK YAHHH" to ...

Maura Johnston — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 12:30:00 EDT

Soulja Boy has said "YAHHH TRICK YAHHH" to his 21 & Under Tour—which also featured Lil Mama and Tiffany Evans—so the ringtone rapper can "work on his new album," or so his people claim. So, what do you think: Is "working on his album" code for "watching his YouTube hits add up so he can add a new freestyle to it the second his view-odometer rolls over to 500,000" or "avoiding future assassination attempts"? [Backstage Pass]

Soulja Boy's Potential Assassin Finds Supporters In Local Comment Section

Maura Johnston — Mon, 24 Mar 2008 10:30:38 EDT

By now you've probably heard the story of the 12-year-old kid who tried to kill Soulja Boy by throwing a rock through his tour bus when it was parked outside a hotel in Bloomington, Ill., and how, when confronted by the police about his crime, the rascal simply replied "I hate Soulja Boy." Instead of the finger-wagging and "what about the children" mau-mauing that a crime incorporating both vandalism and a preteen's murderous impulses might normally attract from a Web site's comments section, this news elicited quite a few "go on, get 'im!" responses from readers of the local paper:

The first comment did much to set the tone:

Michael wrote on Mar 21, 2008 6:05 PM:

" I hate Souljaboy too, and I'm in my 50s. "

It took three comments for someone to maybe think that the kid was guilty of something:

buckeye wrote on Mar 21, 2008 7:44 PM:

" This boy should be arrested , wasting a perfectly good rock, its crimminal. "

But then someone said that the kid didn't go far enough in his attempts to brain Soulja Boy:

laurenmarie123 wrote on Mar 22, 2008 11:36 PM:
" This kid should be awarded a medal of honor. I applaud him and next time he should use a brick for more damage. "

The lone voice of reason?

Hurried_Hwfe wrote on Mar 22, 2008 9:08 AM:

" I lik'em. I'm in my 60's. Get that kid in control! "

I'll let her misuse of apostrophes slide, if only because reading these comments made me feel like a reality-TV remake of The Lottery (perhaps with "Yahhh!" running over the closing credits?) isn't too far off.

Police: Boy threw rock through Soulja Boy's windshield [Pantagraph.com]

Soulja Boy-Related Instructional Videos Branch Out Into Song-Creation Tutorials

Maura Johnston — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 16:00:52 EST

Do you want to write a song as catchy as Soulja Boy's "Crank That," one that will lead you to a life of making YouTube dance-lesson videos, being chased around by mini-yous, and helming sneaker lines from the comfort of your own bedroom? The above video has step-by-step instructions on how to re-create the inescapable song's beat using the audio-editing program Acid, and there's even a sound pack to assist those budding Soulja Boys and Girls on the path toward ringtone stardom. NB: The first person to put their version of "Crank That" together with either the theme to Super Mario Bros. or one of the Mario Paint tracks Jess unearthed Friday gets an official Idolator cookie, or at least a "YAHH TRICK YAHHH" from me. [YouTube via Notes From A Different Kitchen]

Soulja Boy's Newest Venture Inspires Many IMs Consisting Solely Of The Word "Shooooooooeeeeeeesssss"

Maura Johnston — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 16:15:44 EST

So Soulja Boy's personal line of kicks are going to be called Yums, which is appropriate since the colors they're available in are bright hues that bring to mind Sour Patch Kids, Trix, and other sugar-covered things that are really bad for your teeth and well-being. But! They're also packaged in what look to be emoticon-covered boxes, because if there's one thing Soulja Boy is all about, it's keeping himself Internet-real. Which may also be why he seemingly hasn't moved out of the bedroom where he first became a YouTube star—he knows that said room, with its photographs stuck to the wall and dorm-room furniture, is his own personal soda-fountain counter, and it reminds him of his humble origins every time he hunkers down to go to sleep. Or at least it will until he has the whole thing bronzed. [SODMG.com via ONTD]

Would Rock Bands Be Better If They Had Their Own "Crank That"s?

Jess Harvell — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 11:20:31 EST

Soulja Boy! He's popular. Well, he sells singles. Not so much albums. But a lot of singles! So many singles. And YouTube hits. He attracts the YouTube hits. All related to a dance. A dance you may have heard, seen, or tried to do yourself! You'd think at this point there's not a single thing left to be said about Soulja Boy and the mini-trend of choreographed toe-tapping that he's sparked among aspiring popular musicians, one that's profitable for labels for the moment but not a particularly safe long term bet for reversing dipping sales. And you'd be right! Yet that fact has not stopped the Wall Street Journal from devoting many hundreds of words to recapping the tale of Soulja Boy. He's divisive! He's reopened the generation gap! He's given MC Hammer a reason to go on! And yet despite its rehashery, the WSJ's story does raise one important, semi-new, mostly implied question: Would rock bands be improved by their own dance routines? Is there room in indie for cranking that James Murphy?

While choreographed routines are still rare among rock artists, more of them are making music to fill dance floors. Popular groups such as LCD Soundsystem, Hot Chip, Justice and Daft Punk feature beats, samples and electronic melodies that often overshadow lyrics.

And why can't these guys, despite some of them not being rock bands at all, come up with their own leanings and rockings? Feist did it, sez the WSJ. Kinda! And so did OK Go! There is no reason why America's young people shouldn't be videotaping themselves doing the Charleston or humping ottomans or maybe some modified Oompa Loompa moves to "Waters Of Nazareth."

But Can You Dance To It? [WSJ]

Mark Your Calendars: Idolator Is Live-Blogging The Grammys This Sunday

Maura Johnston — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 16:30:38 EST

Yes, that's right—Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET is when our live coverage of the Grammys, which will be filled with the walking dead and the incredibly awkward, begins. It'll be my first liveblog from my four-person orange couch! Here's the nominee list, so you can read up on who's in, who's out, and who's up for Best Polka Album. And to get you even more excited for Sunday, here are a few final news items on the show, presented in handy bullet form:

• Jimmy Jam is reuniting with The Time for their performance with Rihanna on Sunday night. And the group has apparently mended fences with Prince, for those of you who want to taunt yourself with the possibility of the Purple One returning to the small screen.

• Kanye West is planning on paying tribute to his mom during his just-announced set.

• John Mayer is playing too! Please God I hope he's not going to dress up like Borat.

• There's a company out there that's trying to scam people by selling fake tickets to the Grammys. Wouldn't fake tickets to the Hannah Montana movie have been a more profitable enterprise?

• Sasha Frere-Jones thinks Soulja Boy was robbed when it came to Grammy nominations. Tell it to Mims, dude.

In August, Soulja Boy made this offer: "Whoever ...

Jess Harvell — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 14:15:43 EST

In August, Soulja Boy made this offer: "Whoever Buys The Most Albums and take a picture and proove how many copies they bought and upload it and post a comment on my page or email the picture to souljaboytellem@tmail.com Will Win A Spot on my TOP FRIENDS FOREVER! You will never get taken down!!!" Yet six months later there's (as far as we can tell) yet to be a winner announced. And if this an ongoing contest, we're totally gonna hit up every used CD store in the tri-state area to make that Top 8. [SoundClick/MySpace; HT: Ethan Padgett]

A Soulja Boy Mea Culpa

Jess Harvell — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:00:14 EST

Dear Soulja Boy, I'm sorry if my initial post on your new single "Yahh" seemed somewhat dismissive. Over the last week I have come to understand it is actually the first great song of 2008. What confused me at first was its basic resemblance to all your other terrible singles, but I finally understood its unique power when I realized I had been walking around for days unconsciously shouting "YAHH!" and scaring the dog. My bad. Love, Jess. P.S. YAHHGADAYAHGADAYAHH. [Idolator]

Soulja Boy Faces Life After "Yooooooooouuuuuuuu"

jharv — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 12:05:39 EST

On the one hand, Soulja Boy's joy-sapping combo of viciously unengaging monotone flow and viciously amelodic Nth-gen snap synths reaches an irritating/inspid peak on the new "Yahhh!" On the other hand, if I was in sixth grade and on a wicked sugar high right now I'd totally be running around my neighborhood annoying everyone by shouting that one awesome "blargadahahayahh!"^* noise in the chorus over and over again.

Soulja Boy feat. A-Rab - "Yahhh!" [XXL]

^* Not an exact transcription.

Verizon's Top Music: What Yooooouuuu Enjoyed Hearing Out Of Tiny Speakers In 2007

dangibs — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 12:00:54 EST

Sure, we're ten days into the new year, and the music year just passed has been covered in every imaginable manner, but have we heard the contributions of the true driving force in the music industry? The consumers who are keeping the leaky ship afloat? The voice of those people has been heard... through the announcement of Verizon's top ten ringtones for 2007. The list (which is, curiously, arranged in alphabetical order) after the jump, but for now a few thoughts.

THE GOOD: I suppose the good news depends on your opinion of one-hit-wonder rap hits of the past year (Hurricane Chris, Sean Kingston, Soulja Boy Tell 'Em). Maybe the good news is that there's only one Fergie song on there, and it isn't "Big Girls Don't Cry (Personal)."
THE BAD: "The Way I Live" by Baby Boy Da Prince, and of course, Fergie.
THE WHAAAA? With Interscope announcing that Soulja Boy hit the three-million mark in ringtones, yet had only just reached gold status as far as actual album sales, it nearly makes my head hurt to think of where the music business is going from here, or if anyone will actually be releasing songs that last more than 30 seconds by this time next year.

"A Bay Bay," by Hurricane Chris
"Beautiful Girls (Main Chorus)," by Sean Kingston
"Buy U A Drank (Shawty Snappin')," by T-Pain
"Crank That (Soulja Boy)," by Soulja Boy Tell 'Em
"Glamorous," by Fergie
"Party Like A Rock Star," by Shop Boyz
"Rockstar," by Nickelback
"Stronger," by Kanye West
"The Way I Live," by Baby Boy Da Prince
"This Is Why I'm Hot (Chorus)," by MIMS

Verizon Wireless Announces Top Music from 2007 [PR Newswire]
Soulja Boy Tell'em Makes History as 'Crank That' Passes the 3,000,000 Mark in Downloads [PR Newswire]

Googlers Want To Know: "Why Is That Boy With The Weird Glasses Singing About Superman?"

mjohnston — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 08:53:30 EST

Google's year-end wrapup of search trends—the Google Zeitgeist—came out last night, and in addition to finding out that Hannah Montana fans are much more likely to use search engines than Rolling Stones fans and that people were more interested in learning about emo than about gout, the search engine compiled its list of the 10 most popular lyrics searches this year:

1. umbrella lyrics (rihanna)
2. soulja boy lyrics
3. bubbly lyrics (colbie caillat)
4. paramore lyrics
5. lil wayne lyrics
6. taylor swift lyrics
7. apologize lyrics (timbaland)
8. hannah montana lyrics
9. girlfriend lyrics (avril lavigne)
10. avril lavigne lyrics

I'm going to guess that Lil Wayne is up there just because of the sheer volume of music he put out this year. But Soulja Boy at No. 2? Is it just that people wanted to sing and do the dance at the same time, or are they trying to winnow down the exact meaning of the verb "to superman"?

Google Zeitgeist 2007 [Google]

What Can Brown Do For Us?: Chris Blows a "Kiss" Right Behind Soulja Boy on Hot 100

Chris Molanphy — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 14:05:04 EDT

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on the Billboard Hot 100 in the latest installment of "100 And Single":

When writing last week's column, I mentioned the fast-rising Chris Brown single "Kiss Kiss (feat. T-Pain)" almost as an afterthought. But Brown and T become the story on Billboard's Hot 100 this week, soaring 20 places to No. 2. Which puts them right behind... yes, the indefatigable Soulja Boy, holding onto No. 1 for a seventh week with "Crank That." The Boy has got to drop sometime (and the song is eroding), but who'll grab the jump ball for No. 1 in the next week or two is still anyone's guess.

Remember the Super-Ho: "Crank That" is one of only three songs in the Top 10 not earning enough points to win a bullet (Billboard's indicator of upward sales and airplay momentum), meaning other songs are closing in on Mr. YouTube. There is a lot of movement in the Top 10 in general this week, with three songs dropping out entirely (Britney Spears' "Gimme More," J. Holiday's "Bed" and—saints be praised!—Fergie's "Big Girls Don't Cry") to make way for new blood. Let's look at some of the contenders.

The huge move by "Kiss Kiss" happens for the reason these things usually do nowadays: a big debut on iTunes. It's the most-purchased song of the week, with a debut total of nearly 160,000 downloads. Airplay is also building gradually, and it had better keep going: second-week sales of "Kiss" probably won't equal the pent-up demand 99-cent buyers showed in week one, and radio might have to pick up some of the slack if Brown and T-Pain are going to take over the top slot. (By the way, with Baby Bash's "Cyclone" rising to No. 7 and Kanye West's "Good Life" up to No. 8, T-Pain does indeed have the trio of simultaneous featured-vocal Top 10 hits we predicted last week.)

OneRepublic's gift from Timbaland, "Apologize," has been on the verge for weeks now, but while it earns a bullet at No. 3, it's starting to slow just a bit: iTunes sales, which have fueled its fast rise, are flat-to-down. It does garner enough airplay this week to rank among radio's top 10 most-played songs. At this point, if "Apologize" is going to top the Hot 100, airplay's going to have to keep building; if Adult Contemporary radio catches onto the day-shift-friendly ballad soon, that could still happen.

But Alicia Keys remains the stealth MVP. While she holds at No. 4 with "No One," the deep data shows continued growth on all fronts: it's now the most-played song at radio, period, and the song moves into the Top Five in digital sales, with another double-digit percentage increase. As impressive as Chris Brown's move this week is, there's still a good chance Keys could pull a shocker if the stars align. It's a similar story for the No. 5 hit, Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly," which makes an even stronger leap on iTunes (up 22% in overall digital sales and the winner of Billboard's "Sales Gainer" prize) and keeps rising, ever so slowly, on the radio. If the song keeps creeping up like this, Caillat's snoozer could be a winner three or four No. 1's from now.

When Routine Bites Hard, and Ambitions Are Low: The shocker for hipster-rock fans on the Hot 100 this week is the chart's top debut at No. 68: the Killers' cover of Joy Division's "Shadowplay." It instantly becomes the highest-charting Ian Curtis composition ever to grace the U.S. singles chart, as the immortal "Love Will Tear Us Apart" never even made the Hot 100 back in 1980. And given New Order's middling historical performance on American radio ("Regret," their highest charter, only reached No. 28), it even ranks among the bigger U.S. hits for co-writers/bandmates Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Stephen Morris.

Of course, all of the above data points pertain to songwriting credits; it's the Killers who get the artist credit on "Shadowplay," as Brandon Flowers & co. recorded the dour classic for the soundtrack of Control, Anton Corbijn's Curtis biopic. As with Feist's recent oddball hit "1, 2, 3, 4" (now all the way down at No. 76, by the way), a ton of iTunes sales is what's fueling the chart appearance—it ranks just outside the Top 10 in digital sales this week—as it has no appreciable airplay. ("Shadowplay" does debut within the lower rungs of the Modern Rock chart, however.) The song's sales performance is kind of impressive: Control is still only playing at a couple of art-house theaters nationwide, with a wider release still to come.

The takeaways: (1) TV and film—even a film with limited exposure—remain much more powerful promotional tools for a song than anything record labels or radio can do; and (2) the Killers still have fans. In fact, it's not a stretch to say maybe their last album would've produced some bigger chart hits if they'd, y'know, recorded better songs...

Branding It: We might have spoken too soon dissing 2007 American Idol winner Jordin Sparks last week—"Tattoo" finally makes a big move into the Top 40 this week, up 16 spots to No. 39. Both Maura and I have heard it building on Top 40 radio (in New York and Chicago) over the last couple of weeks, so clearly Jive Records is working it, hard. (Conspiracy theory du jour: now that a certain song by a certain other Jive female pop star is sinking fast, the label's radio-promotions team is a lot less distracted.)

Stuff to Watch: We've already run down the hot-n-heavy competition for No. 1 next week, but even below the Top Five there are medium-term contenders, including Rihanna's fast-rising Ne-Yo duet at No. 9.

Oh, and we shouldn't gloat too long about Ms. Fergalicious vacating the Top 10 this week. "Clumsy," the (uuuugh...) fifth single from Fergie's positively undead album The Dutchess, shoots up 46 spots and will no doubt make the Top 40 next week. The siege continues.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 1, 15 weeks)
2. Chris Brown, "Kiss Kiss" (LW No. 22, 6 weeks)
3. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 3, 12 weeks)
4. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 4, 7 weeks)
5. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 5, 17 weeks)
6. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 2, 13 weeks)
7. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 11, 13 weeks)
8. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 10, 6 weeks)
9. Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo, "Hate That I Love You" (LW No. 15, 8 weeks)
10. Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E., "The Way I Are" (LW No. 7, 21 weeks)
11. J. Holiday, "Bed" (LW No. 8, 14 weeks)
12. Fergie, "Big Girls Don't Cry" (LW No. 9, 27 weeks)
13. Britney Spears, "Gimme More" (LW No. 6, 7 weeks)
14. 50 Cent feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland, "Ayo Technology" (LW No. 12, 11 weeks)
15. Pink, "Who Knew" (LW No. 14, 20 weeks)
16. matchbox twenty, "How Far We've Come" (LW No. 17, 8 weeks)
17. Nickelback, "Rockstar" (LW No. 13, 37 weeks)
18. Keyshia Cole feat. Missy Elliott & Lil Kim, "Let It Go" (LW No. 16, 18 weeks)
19. Maroon 5, "Wake Up Call" (LW No. 19, 11 weeks)
20. Daughtry, "Over You" (LW No. 23, 11 weeks)

Soulja Boy Cranks Out A Lesson In Web 2.0 Marketing

mjohnston — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 16:15:33 EDT

The success of tribute-video favorite Soulja Boy has been called by some people the perfect example of Web buzz culminating in huge success, with his instructional dance videos (and subsequent clips like people who have learned their lessons, like the one above) being key to his success on the singles charts. Rafi Kam at Oh Word boils the success of Soulja Boy down to four points that people who "want to stay authentic and aren't currently creating ringtone rap or new dance hooks" can take away about how to find success on the new-world Internet:

1. The web is not like old media - it's free and can be used to spread your music. (what, you heard that one before?)
2. 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)
3. If you can get your fans to do your marketing for you, you really win (what, you heard that one before too?)
4. 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.

All good points—especially the last one. But one thing that I think is important to note is that while sales of "Crank Dat" itself have been strong—its sales total is at 1,732,000 digital copies and counting—sales of Soulja Boy's album haven't been nearly as impressive; in its third week of availability, sales for SouljaBoyTellEm.com just cracked the 200,000 mark, and sales for "Crank Dat"'s follow-up single, the dance-instruction-free "Soulja Girl," are already starting to sag slightly in its third week on the chart. And that song, which was accompanied by a "Be A Soulja Girl" audience-participation contest when it premiered on TRL, seems like much more of a play for the 13-year-old set, than its predecessor. So do these tactics work for a career beyond a song, or is the Web 2.0 shortened attention span part and parcel of success in this era? Or should Soulja Boy have extended his TRL contest to all of YouTube, thereby ensuring his place on the YouTube top videos list for at least a few more weeks?

Crank Dat White Girl - the Soulja Boy lesson plan [Oh Word]
Soulja Boy White Girl Style... [YouTube]

Three Rising Hits Wait For "Superman" To Fly Away From Hot 100

Chris Molanphy — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 14:00:46 EDT

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on the Billboard Hot 100 in the latest installment of "100 And Single":

Like planes on a runway, three fast-rising singles are lined up at the bottom of the Top Five on Billboard's Hot 100. But they've got to radio the tower and get two jumbo jets to stop hogging the tarmac: Kanye West, whose still-hot "Stronger" is at No. 2 for a fourth straight week (his sixth runner-up week overall, broken by a single week at No. 1 last month); and super-soaking chart champ Soulja Boy, now in his sixth week at No. 1 with "Crank That (Soulja Boy)." With both Soulja's and Kanye's singles seeing slowdowns in airplay and drops in digital sales of 15-20% each, this week could mark the start of their slow decline.

Does "No One" See Keys Coming? The three challengers lined up at Nos. 3 through 5 are exactly the contenders we discussed last week: "Apologize," Timbaland's teamup with the Fray II... er, OneRepublic; "No One," Alicia Keys's comeback smash; and "Bubbly," Colbie Caillat's sleepy sleeper hit, finally in the Top Five after a slow-and-steady 16-week chart run.

On its face, Timba and OneRepublic's gushy ballad remains the likeliest to take the crown. It's growing steadily in airplay, and explosively on iTunes and other buck-a-tune sites. You'd never know it from the song's meager Hot 100 move this week to No. 3 from No. 4 — or its move on the digital-sales chart from No. 3 to No. 2 — but "Apologize" had a stellar week, moving 133,000 downloads—a 16% increase, which garnered it Billboard's "Sales Gainer" prize. Another week or two like this, especially if radio catches up with sales ("Apologize" is nearing the Top 10 on Hot 100 Airplay), and OneRepublic will be popping champagne even before its debut album drops.

That is, if Keys doesn't sneak around them. Her move to No. 4 from No. 8 is the most impressive in this week's Top 10, moving past the slower-rising Caillat. On the radio side, "No One" has a massive built-in advantage: a double-shot of airplay from both Top 40 stations and R&B stations, something that Timbaland can't count on from his pop/rock crossover hit. (To digress, this is one of the many reasons why the last 10 years on the charts have found hits by white people—or, in this case, a black producer remixing a very white band's pop ballad—at a severe disadvantage.) Couple her already-Top 5 airplay with a 24% boost in digital sales (the only reason Timba won the Billboard sales award is his total increase, which was numerically bigger), and you have a formula for her return to No. 1. This could get interesting.

Corporate Rock Still Sells...and Sometimes Plays: Since the past week saw the debut of Al "GovernmentNames" Shipley's new column on the vagaries of up-the-middle rock, I thought perhaps "100 and Single" should take a look at how rock's doing on the big, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink pop chart. Simply put, is anything currently in the Modern Rock Top 10 doing any business on the Hot 100?

One song is, and it's shaping up to be an honest-to-goodness pop hit: Finger Eleven's "Paralyzer." The song topped Modern Rock literally months ago and will probably end up in that format's top two for all of 2007—alongside Linkin Park—thanks to its slow climb and slower fall (in its 35th week on Modern Rock, it's still in the Top Five). On the Hot 100, the Canucks' catchy hit is up six spots this week to No. 26, as pop fans, and the stations they listen to, finally glom onto its virtual-disco beat. That chart move doesn't even fully indicate how strongly this old, old song is crossing over: it moves into the Top 20 in digital sales (up 16%) and into the Top 40 in airplay (now getting more radio action than T-Pain's "Bartender"!).

By comparison, nothing else in the Modern Rock Top 10 has even made the pop Top 40. Only the chart's undisputed champion, Foo Fighters' "The Pretender," is making any headway on the big chart, moving a modest five spots to No. 48, and that's even while Dave Grohl's latest enters its third month at No. 1 on Modern Rock and second month on top of Mainstream Rock. The two lessons: the rock radio formats represent a small proportion of the Hot 100's total points; and to cross over with a rock hit, you really have to cross over, with teeny-bopper radio giving the kind of lift only it can provide.

Carriewatch: Briefly, it's a good week on the charts for American Idol's all-time most successful winner (yeah, fellow Clarkson fans, you heard me, and it gives me no joy). "So Small," Carrie Underwood's first single from her forthcoming album Carnival Ride, shoots 15 spaces into the Top 40 (and enters the Country chart's Top Five). Meanwhile, her ancient single's run for the record books keeps chugging, as "Before He Cheats" actually sneaks up a couple of spots to No. 42, in its 59th week on the Hot 100. "Cheats" is now in the all-time longevity Top Five, and if it hangs onto the chart's top half for two more weeks, it'll move past "Macarena."

While we're mentioning Idol, my long-held theory that Taylor Hicks' win in 2006 broke the show's business model may be gaining another data point. The show's 2007 winner, Jordin Sparks, has another tepid week with her first "official" single, "Tattoo." It's now at No. 55 after debuting two weeks ago at...No. 58. And there's nothing handicapping her: the song is up at iTunes, if selling weakly; radio airplay is building (New York's Z100 reports strong requests) but nationwide, so far, it's negligible.

Stuff to Watch: Soulja Boy's lead in total chart points is probably too huge for anyone to unseat him next week, but two weeks should do it. So start placing bets now on the Timba-vs.-Alicia fight. Further down the chart, Chris "Hey, I like to sing, too" Brown is trying to make us forget his new album's dud first single ("Wall to Wall") never happened, and thanks to T-Pain he appears to be pulling it off. Expect "Kiss Kiss" (No. 22, up from No. 35) to make the Top 10 by the middle of November, giving T-Pain a possible featured-vocal hat trick.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 1, 14 weeks)
2. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 2, 12 weeks)
3. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 4, 11 weeks)
4. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 8, 6 weeks)
5. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 7, 16 weeks)
6. Britney Spears, "Gimme More" (LW No. 3, 6 weeks)
7. Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E., "The Way I Are" (LW No. 5, 20 weeks)
8. J. Holiday, "Bed" (LW No. 6, 13 weeks)
9. Fergie, "Big Girls Don't Cry" (LW No. 9, 26 weeks)
10. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 10, 5 weeks)
11. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 13, 12 weeks)
12. 50 Cent feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland, "Ayo Technology" (LW No. 11, 10 weeks)
13. Nickelback, "Rockstar" (LW No. 12, 36 weeks)
14. Pink, "Who Knew" (LW No. 14, 19 weeks)
15. Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo, "Hate That I Love You" (LW No. 18, 7 weeks)
16. Keyshia Cole feat. Missy Elliott & Lil Kim, "Let It Go" (LW No. 16, 17 weeks)
17. matchbox twenty, "How Far We've Come" (LW No. 15, 7 weeks)
18. Plies feat. T-Pain, "Shawty" (LW No. 17, 18 weeks)
19. Maroon 5, "Wake Up Call" (LW No. 23, 10 weeks)
20. Plain White T's, "Hey There Delilah" (LW No. 20, 29 weeks)

Some Kind of Chart Superman: Soulja Boy Leads Hot 100, Calls All Comers Filthy Names

Chris Molanphy — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 14:00:31 EDT

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on the Billboard Hot 100 in the latest installment of "100 And Single":

Are you sick of hearing Soulja Boy's insidious little steel-drum beat leak out of cars rolling down your block? Hope not, because he isn't going anywhere. "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" continues to rule Billboard's Hot 100, and it actually earns a bullet in its fifth week at No. 1. Which means it's still growing in both airplay and sales—it's radio's most-played song for a second week, and it retakes the top spot in digital sales from Britney Spears's faltering "Gimme More." She and Kanye West are probably secretly wishing for the Bush Administration to re-institute the draft so that this kid gets shipped off when he finally turns 18.

Doubling Up, with a Side of Pain: The stasis in the top three belies the more interesting churn further down the chart. The top 10, in particular, sports a pair of hip-hop stars who are each credited on a pair of hits. Amazingly, neither one of them is T-Pain, but he does figure into this.

Timbaland's diversification gambit pays off, as "Apologize," his bid to expand into alt-pop balladry, overtakes his other top five hit, "The Way I Are." The two singles off Shock Value are now back-to-back at Nos. 4 and 5. Love it or hate it, "Apologize" by all rights should be credited to "featured" act OneRepublic, the Colorado five-piece that wrote and first recorded the song before letting Timba remix it for his album; they're preparing a different version for their forthcoming debut. With a massive boost of airplay this week, the sticky-sweet "Apologize" is emerging as the "Hey There Delilah" of the fall; at this rate, it'll top the chart by Thanksgiving and be widely despised by everyone you know before Christmas.

The other top 10 denizen benefiting from radio love is Kanye West, who pairs his still-hot "Stronger" at No. 2 with the revived "Good Life," which reverses last week's fall and shoots eight spots to No. 10. As we predicted last week, airplay is just now kicking in on West's second (third, if you count pre-release leak "Can't Tell Me Nothing") hit from Graduation. Actually, it's more than kicking in: Billboard reports that "Good Life" saw "an increase of 25 million audience impressions, the largest of the year." For those of you new to such industry gobbledygook, "impressions" is a measurement that (roughly) approximates a song's radio listeners by multiplying plays on each station by the number of listeners for that station, as estimated by Arbitron ratings. And 25 million impressions is a big gain, as a No. 1 hit usually garners more than 100 million or, when it's massive, 200 million impressions. Which means that "Good Life" in a single week garnered about one-eighth to one-fourth the airplay it'll need if it's destined to be a chart-topper.

The guy featured on Kanye's newest Top 10 hit adds to his ridiculously successful year. Yup, T-Pain's back, Vocodering his way through another rising hit and prolonging his improbable residency in the winner's circle. With another of T's featured spots moving toward the Top 10—Baby Bash's "Cyclone," up four places to No. 13—and Chris Brown's own T-supported track, "Kiss Kiss," leaping 20 spots into the Top 40, brace yourselves for a Painful holiday season.

We Say Let Ne-Yo Duet with Feist: Briefly, here's some other stuff we saw coming last week. Justin Timberlake's "Until the End of Time" picks up Beyoncé as a duet partner and perks up on the chart, moving 13 spaces into the Top 30. In fact, it's a good week all 'round for boudoir duets, as Rihanna's "Hate That I Love You," featuring Ne-Yo, leaps into the Top 20 from No. 26—and for the first time all year, homegirl has a chart hit bigger than "Umbrella." (In the time it's taken that spring-and-summer smash to fall to No. 26, Rihanna's been through a whole 'nother hit, the already-gone "Shut Up and Drive," which peaked at a surprisingly tepid No. 15.)

I know you folks with cool Adult Album Alternative stations in your nabes think it's a smash, but Feist's "1, 2, 3, 4" shows this week just how light on airplay and vulnerable to the vagaries of iTunes it is—it returns to almost exactly the same spot it was in two weeks ago (No. 27) after its rise to No. 8 last week. The culprit? A 48% decline in digital downloads. The song is still in iTunes' Top 10, but with no major-market Top 40, adult-contemporary or alt-rock airplay to back it up, that sizable sales drop proves fatal. Time to pitch the song to Microsoft for a Zune ad?

Ingrid Who? The latest beneficiary of Feist's TV-fueled, all-sales-no-airplay model is Ingrid Michaelson, a Staten Island-based (holla, Wu fans!) singer-songwriter whose "The Way I Am" shoots 43 places into the Top 40. Already a Top 10 iTunes track, Michaelson's hey-Timbaland-at-least-I-understand-subject-verb-agreement tune got a triple-hit of TV love this month, from Grey's Anatomy (ask the Fray how that show worked out for them), Last Call with Carson Daly and now an Old Navy commercial. No airplay to speak of yet, but if Old Navy keeps pumping that ad, digital sales should keep her afloat long enough for radio program directors to catch on.

Stuff to Watch: Next week, let us all light candles, hold hands and chant that, yea, the tyranny of Fergie will cease; the deathless "Big Girls Don't Cry" falls a big-for-her four spots to No. 9 and could finally exit the Top 10 soon. As for the top of the chart, nobody's going to stop Soulja Boy in the next seven days now that Britney has wilted. So the ladies to watch down the line are newbie Colbie Caillat, whose aptly titled "Bubbly" keeps creeping toward the top five; and relatively old lady Alicia Keys, who's back in the top 10 for the first time in nearly three years with "No One." The latter is catching on faster at R&B radio than Top 40, but if pop and A/C radio bring up the rear, and her iTunes sales keep growing (she's up 23% this week), the mass-appeal Keys could be back on top pretty soon. In the meantime, watch "Apologize"—thanks to fast gains in both sales and airplay, that song's most likely, near-term, to bring Soulja to a halt.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 1, 13 weeks)
2. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
3. Britney Spears, "Gimme More" (LW No. 3, 5 weeks)
4. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
5. Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E., "The Way I Are" (LW No. 4, 19 weeks)
6. J. Holiday, "Bed" (LW No. 7, 12 weeks)
7. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 10, 15 weeks)
8. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 12, 5 weeks)
9. Fergie, "Big Girls Don't Cry" (LW No. 5, 25 weeks)
10. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 18, 4 weeks)
11. 50 Cent feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland, "Ayo Technology" (LW No. 13, 9 weeks)
12. Nickelback, "Rockstar" (LW No. 11, 35 weeks)
13. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 17, 11 weeks)
14. Pink, "Who Knew" (LW No. 14, 18 weeks)
15. matchbox twenty, "How Far We've Come" (LW No. 15, 6 weeks)
16. Keyshia Cole feat. Missy Elliott & Lil Kim, "Let It Go" (LW No. 9, 16 weeks)
17. Plies feat. T-Pain, "Shawty" (LW No. 16, 17 weeks)
18. Rihanna feat. Ne-Yo, "Hate That I Love You" (LW No. 26, 6 weeks)
19. Justin Timberlake, "LoveStoned" (LW No. 20, 14 weeks)
20. Plain White T's, "Hey There Delilah" (LW No. 22, 28 weeks)

Soulja Boy Supersoaks Our Sense Of Decency

jharv — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:16:28 EDT

If you thought that the lyrics to bubblegum snap rap sensation "Crank That" were harmless teen-slang gibberish like the rest of us clueless old folks, think again. After Maura dug up this blog post detailing Soulja Boy's "very profane" and "covert lyrics", a quick visit to the Urban Dictionary revealed more about the origin of "Superman that ho" than either of us probably cared to know. The following is perhaps not safe for work or for your faith in the future of dude/lady relationships:

Superman; When you are mad at your girl for not having sex with you. So when she falls asleep you masturbate and cum on her back. After that, stick the bedsheet on to her back and when she wakes up it's stuck to the cum and she has a cape like Superman!!!

"Yo, dawg, Last night my bitch was being frothy so I have her a Superman"

by KryptonicDream Feb 11, 2005

Which sparked the following exchange:

maura@idolator (3:52:57 PM): i like how that is somehow less offensive than "super soak"
jess@idolator (3:53:29 PM): bukkake^* is not more offensive than getting back at your loved one by using semen as rubber cement
jess@idolator (3:53:50 PM): i cant even believe im making these distinctions
jess@idolator (3:53:59 PM): but pop music aimed at junior high students in 2007 is a crazy place
jess@idolator (3:55:08 PM): are you posting about this?
maura@idolator (3:55:37 PM): no you can go ahead because clearly you are the guy who knows what he's talking about
jess@idolator (3:55:57 PM): ...

"Crank" Kid Soulja Boy Very Profane In Covert Lyrics [Playahata.com]

^* Actually I don't know if that's what "supersoak that ho" means, but it probably says a lot about me that it's what I immediately assumed.

She's Got One Thing Going for Her: Britney Two Heartbeats Away from Soulja Boy Atop Hot 100

Chris Molanphy — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:00:32 EDT

Ed. note: Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy, our resident chart guru, looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on the Billboard Hot 100 in the latest installment of "100 And Single":

Would this improve the judge's opinion at all? During the worst week of her annus horribilis, Britney Spears' comeback single "Gimme More" does even better than we suggested last week. "More" slams into the top three on Billboard's Hot 100, just two spaces below the still-reigning "Crank That (Soulja Boy)." Just think—besides Kanye West, the only thing standing between Britney and her second career No. 1 single is a hit by a guy as young as she was when she recorded the first one. Kind of redeems all the other crap going in her life, doesn't it? Um...right?

Perhaps Timba Can Tell Britney How To "Apologize": The chart's top two positions, occupied by Soulja Boy and West's "Stronger," are virtually the only ones static in this week's Top 10, as three songs break up the party, each soaring a minimum of 16 spaces. The biggest explosion, of course, is by Spears, who shoots 65 places to No. 3 in a jump fueled almost entirely by digital sales; she's now tops on iTunes and has sold 179,000 downloads overall. Interestingly, when Soulja returned to No. 1 last week, his one-week sales number was around 4,000 higher; so Spears's number is impressive but not remarkable. Surprising as this sounds, "Gimme" is now instantly the second-biggest hit of Britney's career and her first Top Five single since "...Baby One More Time" went to No. 1 in the winter of '99. (For the record, the great "Toxic" peaked at No. 9 in 2004.) For "Gimme" to remain a chart fixture, airplay will have to pick up, and her radio scans were practically static this week; so as we've been saying on Idolator for weeks, you probably shouldn't expect this burst of 99-cent curiosity/pity sales to continue. "Gimme" could be off our radar not long after Halloween.

Just missing the Top Five is the indefatigable Timbaland, who scores the third straight hit from the poorly reviewed Shock Value: "Apologize" leaps to No. 6 from outside the Top 20, even while his deathless summer smash "The Way I Are" remains planted in the Top Five. At this point, Timba has to regard the Shock project as a mixed success. His segue from rapping on Nelly Furtado's and Justin Timberlake's hits to scoring his own—including two tracks without their help—has been remarkably smooth (somewhere in a Florida mansion this week, Scott Storch is surely grinding his gold-fronted teeth). But all this radio love isn't doing much for the album, which reaches the half-year mark this week with only 687,000 cumulative sales. That's respectable, until you consider that Kanye West and 50 Cent each sold that many albums in a single week last month. Also, for what it's worth, the third song slamming into the Top 10 this week is fueling a much bigger album-sales surge...

Told Her That You Love Her More: Not since 1990, when Suzanne Vega scored a smash on the pop and R&B charts with a dance remix of an a cappella song, has a whiter-than-white girl found herself with an unlikelier Top 10 hit. Feist's "1, 2, 3, 4" continues its improbable climb, gliding 20 spaces to No. 8. As Maura reported yesterday, the tune's appeal to folks with pleated pants, minivans and mortgages is fueling a burst of album sales for Feist's The Reminder, but the chart performance of the song itself is even more remarkable. To those of you who said last week, "Well, triple-A stations are playing it, right?"—believe me, folks, radio has nothing to do with this hit. On Billboard's Hot 100 Airplay chart—which supplies data for the radio side of the main Hot 100 and incorporates all currents-based radio formats—Feist's song appears nowhere in the Top 75. What Leslie Feist has here is still an all-sales phenomenon, as incessant plays of Apple's iPod Nano commercial send thousands to their computers to buy the perky little ditty featured within. And they're not just heading to iTunes, either: "1, 2, 3, 4" is the top-seller on Amazon's brand-new MP3 store, which just launched last week. So, assuming Billboard is including Amazon results in its digital-sales tally, Feist's sales there are fueling her chart climb. Ironic, ain't it? Amazon's best-selling MP3 is a song people learned about from Apple—the very company Amazon and the labels supporting its new store are hoping to defeat.

Shaken Up: The three big Top 10 debuts mean several songs are given their walking papers, including Pink's late-blooming "Who Knew," 50 Cent's cursed "Ayo Technology" and—wow, finally!—Nickelback's umpteenth hit, "Rockstar." The latter is notable only because "Rockstar" is, in its 34th week, belatedly breaking at some of the Top 40 and Hot AC stations that were holding out; so while we snobs might delight at Kroeger & co. not scoring a bigger hit, you can probably expect "Rockstar" to continue to pollute our environments for months to come, as more slow-moving stations pile on.

Speaking of slow-moving hits, those of you following the continuing saga of Carrie Underwood's race for the record books should know that "Before He Cheats" slips out of the Top 40 (down to No. 44), but holds on for a 57th week on the Hot 100. This moves the song past Paula Cole's "I Don't Want to Wait" and Faith Hill's "The Way You Love Me," both 56-weekers. She's within striking distance of the all-time longevity top five, but will have to hold on for two more weeks to move past two 58-week easy-listeners, Santana's "Smooth" and the Fray's "How to Save a Life." For those of you thinking, How hard can this be? She's only at No. 44!: Billboard removes songs from the chart that are older than 20 weeks and fall below No. 50—so if Underwood drops more than six rungs next week, "Cheats" is gone for good.

Stuff to Watch: Next week, let's see if Kanye West's latest single, "Good Life," rebounds on the chart after a weird five-space "backward bullet"—the "P.Y.T."-sampling song gets pushed back to No. 18 from No. 13, but simultaneously earns Billboard's "Greatest Gainer/Airplay" award, meaning that a slew of new stations are pumping it even as its iTunes sales soften. Also, keep an eye on Justin Timberlake's sixth (yes, seriously) FutureSex/LoveSounds hit, the slow jam "Until the End of Time," which is creeping quietly toward the Top 40 but might see a burst of activity soon, thanks to a just-released-to-radio remix that transforms the song into a Beyoncé duet.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 1, 12 weeks)
2. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 2, 10 weeks)
3. Britney Spears, "Gimme More" (LW No. 68, 4 weeks)
4. Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E., "The Way I Are" (LW No. 3, 18 weeks)
5. Fergie, "Big Girls Don't Cry" (LW No. 4, 24 weeks)
6. Timbaland feat. OneRepublic, "Apologize" (LW No. 22, 9 weeks)
7. J. Holiday, "Bed" (LW No. 5, 11 weeks)
8. Feist, "1, 2, 3, 4" (LW No. 28, 3 weeks)
9. Keyshia Cole feat. Missy Elliott & Lil Kim, "Let It Go" (LW No. 7, 15 weeks)
10. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 10, 14 weeks)
11. Nickelback, "Rockstar" (LW No. 8, 34 weeks)
12. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 16, 4 weeks)
13. 50 Cent feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland, "Ayo Technology" (LW No. 6, 8 weeks)
14. Pink, "Who Knew" (LW No. 9, 17 weeks)
15. matchbox twenty, "How Far We've Come" (LW No. 11, 5 weeks)
16. Plies feat. T-Pain, "Shawty" (LW No. 12, 16 weeks)
17. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 18, 10 weeks)
18. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 13, 3 weeks)
19. Rascal Flatts, "Take Me There" (LW No. 50, 10 weeks)
20. Justin Timberlake, "LoveStoned" (LW No. 17, 13 weeks)

Today's TRL is being shot in a smaller-than-usual ...

mjohnston — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 16:04:25 EDT

Today's TRL is being shot in a smaller-than-usual studio, resulting in many moments that are almost as cramped/chaotic as the Video Music Awards (here come the flashbacks!); right now, three young ladies in the audience are getting ready to compete for the title of "Soulja Girl," and they started off by, as Kate put it, "standing up there sort of not talking directly to him but listing all his great qualities." It's like VH1's dating shows, only with training wheels (and vision-obstructing glasses). [TRL]

Soulja Boy's New Single Tries To Super Soak Our Hearts

jharv — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:40:13 EDT

Presenting the bathetic follow up to "Crank That," as teen hip-hop phenom Soulja Boy discovers puppy love and evidences some neurological impairment that forces him to shout his trademark "YOOOOOOOOU" uncontrollably over the smooth R&B chorus. If the song's squeaky, repetitive slow-jam synth-hook is as evil on the first play as "Beautiful Girls" was by the tenth, the mumbly "Soulja Girl" and its grating, demo-quality keyboard patches lack even the old-school ear-pleasing qualities Sean Kingston's producers got when they swiped the melody from "Stand By Me." And it's currently YouTube's No. 3 most-played clip, so forewarned if you plan on turning on your radio in the next few months.

Soulja Boy - "Soulja Girl" [OnSmash]

Maybe It Was the Pooh Video: Soulja Boy Retakes No. 1 on Hot 100

Chris Molanphy — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 13:45:25 EDT

Ed. note: Given that Chris "dennisobell" Molanphy has been our resident chart guru since this site's inception, it seemed natural—if a little bit belated—to give him a column where he looks at the upward, downward, and lack of movement on the Billboard Hot 100. So without further ado, here's the inagural installment of "100 And Single," his weekly look at the movement on the singles chart:

So much for the afterglow—the Great Album Throwdown of 9/11 may have made a king of Kanye West and spurred him to the top of Billboard's album and singles charts, but one week later, he's riding shotgun on both lists. On the Hot 100, his "Stronger" has settled back in at No. 2, behind returning chart-topper—and mere tot—Soulja Boy and his half-eponymous, dance-craze-fueled "Crank That (Soulja Boy)."

Hot Cliff's Notes: As this is my first official chart column for Idolator, I thought I'd offer a quick primer on Billboard's singles chart, which, for all intents and purposes, is the Dow Jones of pop: venerable and slightly complicated. Unlike the Billboard 200 album chart, which is based almost entirely on raw SoundScan data and therefore widely available from multiple news sources, the Hot 100 is distinguished from almost all other music charts by its unique combination of song sales and radio airplay—a formula Billboard guards like it's Coca-Cola. This explains why you don't see online leaks of singles-chart news until late in the week, and pretty much only from Billboard itself.

The Hot 100 will celebrate its 50th anniversary next year, which makes it even more august than the magazine's album charts (which were only standardized around stereo long-playing vinyl in the early '60s). That said, Billboard has adjusted the formula countless times over the years. For our purposes, and for the sake of brevity, the two most interesting changes to the formula in the last decade were:
1. The 1998 elimination of the single-release requirement (a begrudging acknowledgement by Billboard that those greedy labels weren't releasing radio hits as singles anymore); and
2. The 2005 addition of digital-song sales (dominated by iTunes), which basically corrected the effects of the late-'90s death of the single and, three years later, has had a more profound impact on the chart than anything since the invention of SoundScan.

Lucky Boy Could Be the Next, er...Mims: Which brings us back to this week's charts, and Soulja Boy, who had a tremendous week of digital sales—183,000, enough to push him back to No. 1 for his third non-consecutive week there. Sales have overwhelmingly fueled "Crank That" throughout its 11-week chart run, but that might be about to change. Last week, the song earned Billboard's weekly "Greatest Gainer/Airplay" award, which basically means radio stations who previously saw the song as a YouTube/ringtone fad are belatedly adding the song to their rotation. In the iTunes era, this is becoming a common pattern for a big hit single: Up-from-nowhere new acts climb the charts thanks to digital sales (such as Mims, whose "This Is Why I'm Hot" flew to No. 1 last spring with tons of sales and almost no airplay at first); then, just as sales start to tail off, radio catches on and keeps the song aloft.

The good news for Kanye: even while moving backwards, "Stronger" earns a bullet—Billboard's indicator of continued sales and/or airplay growth—which means that, if West wins some more airplay, the two songs could be swapping places again in a week or two. With the rest of the Top 10 largely static—only Colbie Caillat's "Bubbly" makes a big move into the winner's circle this week—the top two records have little in the way of heavy competition. That is, unless some fast-breaking hit crashes into the Top 10 next week...

She's Coming, Bitch: For the third week straight, Britney's Spears' comeback single, "Gimme More," makes an unspectacular—albeit upward—chart move, to No. 68 from No. 75. Haters were quick to pounce on Ms. Waterloo in Vegas two weeks ago, when the single made a tepid No. 85 debut. But as we've noted here on Idolator, here's where a better understanding of how the charts work helps. Britney's climbing the Hot 100 with one hand tied behind her pasty back: "Gimme More" is charting entirely on airplay, which has been modest but steadily increasing each week. With the song finally dropping on iTunes this past Tuesday and already ranked No. 3 there, you can expect to see "Gimme" flying up the chart next week. How high? A Top 40 appearance is a lock, Top 20 all but assured and Top 10 a very distinct possibility. Could she go to No. 1? With Soulja and Kanye still leading her on iTunes and her airplay still building, it's highly unlikely. But we've already seen established acts set records this year: one week last May, a burst of iTunes sales shot Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder" from No. 64 to the top, setting a record for the biggest jump to No. 1 in Hot 100 history.

The Steve Jobs Adult-Music Welfare Program: As forecasted on Idolator, Feist scores her first-ever Top 40 hit, as the iPod Nano-shilling "1, 2, 3, 4" shoots to No. 28 from No. 61. While Billboard includes airplay from numerous radio formats in the Hot 100, it's doubtful that even a shred of the former Broken Social Scenester's chart points are coming from the radio dial—the song has been in iTunes' top five for more than a week now, and as long as that perky Nano commercial keeps playing on prime-time TV, Feist's unlikely career as a pop chanteuse will continue. This is but the latest example of an unlikely hit fueled by an iPod ad: Jet owe their career to Apple, as "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" broke in 2003 after appearing in one of its first jamming-silouhette ads; and just last year, Bob Dylan scored his first No. 1 album in three decades thanks in large part to round-the-clock TV-ad play courtesy of longtime Zimmy-head Steve Jobs.

The top 20, with last week's position and total weeks charted in parentheses:
1. Soulja Boy, "Crank That (Soulja Boy), Soulja Boy Tell'em" (LW No. 2, 11 weeks)
2. Kanye West, "Stronger" (LW No. 1, 9 weeks)
3. Timbaland feat. Keri Hilson & D.O.E., "The Way I Are" (LW No. 3, 17 weeks)
4. Fergie, "Big Girls Don't Cry" (LW No. 4, 23 weeks)
5. J. Holiday, "Bed" (LW No. 6, 10 weeks)
6. 50 Cent feat. Justin Timberlake & Timbaland, "Ayo Technology" (LW No. 5, 7 weeks)
7. Keyshia Cole feat. Missy Elliott & Lil Kim, "Let It Go" (LW No. 7, 14 weeks)
8. Nickelback, "Rockstar" (LW No. 8, 33 weeks)
9. Pink, "Who Knew" (LW No. 9, 16 weeks)
10. Colbie Caillat, "Bubbly" (LW No. 16, 13 weeks)
11. matchbox twenty, "How Far We've Come" (LW No. 12, 4 weeks)
12. Plies feat. T-Pain, "Shawty" (LW No. 10, 15 weeks)
13. Kanye West feat. T-Pain, "Good Life" (LW No. 14, 2 weeks)
14. Plain White T's, "Hey There Delilah" (LW No. 13, 26 weeks)
15. T-Pain feat. Akon, "Bartender" (LW No. 11, 17 weeks)
16. Alicia Keys, "No One" (LW No. 15, 3 weeks)
17. Justin Timberlake, "LoveStoned" (LW No. 18, 12 weeks)
18. Baby Bash feat. T-Pain, "Cyclone" (LW No. 27, 9 weeks)
19. Maroon 5, "Wake Up Call" (LW No. 23, 7 weeks)
20. Elliott Yamin, "Wait for You" (LW No. 22, 18 weeks)

New York "Times" Super Soaks That Ho

Kate Richardson — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 14:30:25 EDT

It's always both amusing and kind of uncomfortable when the New York Times deigns to discuss the unwieldy specificities of YouTube, kind of like when your parents ask you about "this band The Decemberists?" after a long week of drive-time NPR. The attempt at youth media awareness is endearing, yet always just not quite right, even when it's done in the most journalistic of ways.

In a July article about Jane Austen's enduring cultural popularity, the Times actually skimmed the surface of the deep, dark well of Pride and Prejudice tribute videos:

But the best and most timely are music videos that reflect the primal, Adam-and-Eve attraction that Austen so discreetly cloaked. A clever montage of Austen movie heroines is set to Nelly Furtado's "Maneater," and clips of Regency-era men set to Justin Timberlake's "SexyBack."

These kids and their hard-ons for Regency-era men! Aren't the young people today just a scream and a half?

But that was really just a testing of the waters, something kind of genteel to ease them into Monday's exploration of "Crank That"/Disney mash-up videos. The article's main focus is, wisely, the business end of the issue, namely: why do entities like Disney and Nickelodeon tolerate this desecration of their personified animals and cleaning implements?

Nickelodeon, part of Viacom, sees the humorous videos as fair use of its copyrighted content. "Our audiences can creatively mash video from our content as much and as often as they like," said Dan Martinsen, a Nickelodeon spokesman. "By the way," he added, "that was a very nice edit job by whoever did the SpongeBob mash." (That laissez-faire reaction, it should be noted, comes from a company whose corporate parent has a $1 billion piracy lawsuit pending against Google, the owner of YouTube.)

Disney's view is starkly different: any unauthorized use of Disney property is stealing. Still, the company picks its battles carefully. While it closely monitors the Web for infractions, Disney will not discuss how it evaluates potential cases of copyright infringement and declined to comment on the "Crank That" videos.

The fact that the postings have not been removed — YouTube regularly yanks videos that media companies identify as pirated material — highlights the situation mash-ups pose for media companies: are these videos parodies of cultural icons and thus protected under copyright law, or do they trample on intellectual property?

Anthony Falzone, a copyright expert at Stanford, said, "media companies have been fairly tolerant of Internet mash-ups and parodies so far. Wholesale piracy is a much bigger issue, so that is where they are focusing most of their efforts."

Translation: Nickelodeon is, as usual, desperately trying to convey an edgier, down-with-the-kids vibe, while Disney retains its monolithic evil empire silence, allegedly fighting greater evils. But is this a sufficient explanation of Disney's tolerance of these mash-ups? Not for me, which is why I've made my own assumption: Disney secretly gets a kick out of the videos. "Crank That" is obscene, but just innocuous enough to turn a blind eye. Plus, and it pains me to admit this, the videos are generally pretty entertaining. It's like, if your little brother made you watch them you'd probably be like, "Yeah, whatever," but just taken at face value for investigative purposes, they're refreshingly bouncy and fun. Except for maybe the SpongeBob video, which is just inherently grating.

I asked my film school friend Matt Porter to apply his gimlet eye to a few of these videos and give me some of his opinions, as a Final Cut Pro...pro. I've also taken the liberty of noting the means by which each video visually represents the lyric "super soak that ho."

Winnie the Pooh

Matt says: Ok, so, "Soulja Boy" Pooh I approve of. The editing took attention to detail, and while it may not be quite on par with videos like The Electric Six's "Gay Bar" when it comes to syncing mismatched video with audio, it still works, and creates a very enjoyable uncomfortable vibe.
Super soak that ho: A heffalump squirting Roo with water from its trunk.

The Lion King

Matt says: I like the fact that this one chooses to use different clips for "yoooooo" each time it comes up instead of the same series of clips. Again, the lining up of audio and video isn't perfect, but in terms of the general action matching the song, this one might be better than Pooh. This is more like a music video.
Super soak that ho: Simba playfully pulling Nala into the water.

Bambi II

Matt says: Good use of Bambi's facial expressions, even though the lip syncing is pretty far off. Various good character positions; the attitude in their stance matches the mood (of the song). I like the final shot of the two just looking at each other.
Super soak that ho: Bambi stumbling around in a puddle with a turtle on his nose (kind of disappointing).

Matt's verdict: I think Bambi is my favorite, actually. It gets the pace right more than the others. Lion King is good, but lets some moments go too long, and cuts oddly offbeat.

I was happy to hear that Soulja Boy has kicked ...

mjohnston — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 11:53:29 EDT

I was happy to hear that Soulja Boy has kicked Fergie's mushmouthed "Big Girls Don't Cry" as out of the Billboard Hot 100's top spot, but then someone showed me this: "How young is Soulja Boy, the artist who has the new No. 1 song on the Hot 100? So young, that he wasn't even alive when Madonna's "Vogue" was No. 1. Soulja Boy was born July 28, 1990, and is thus the second artist born in the '90s to occupy the penthouse of the Hot 100. The first was Sean Kingston, who achieved it just six weeks ago when he captured the top spot with "Beautiful Girls." Kingston was born Feb. 3, 1990 and was 17 1/2 when he advanced to No. 1. Soulja Boy is even younger, as he is not quite 17 years and two months old." [Billboard]