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It shouldn’t come as a surprise that the most tech-savvy artist of our generation is using all of his gadgets while on tour this summer to continue creating, producing and finishing projects. In doing so, Soulja Boy Tell ’Em landed a big cameo for his upcoming LP.
“I got the studio bus actually on the road, the whole tour,” explained Soulja Boy. “So I’m recording my third album, I was tellin’ ya about, ‘The DeAndre Way,’ it drops in November. I’m recording my album while we’re on tour. So ya’ll can look out for the Soulja Boy/Drake collaboration.”
I sat down with Soulja during Lil Wayne’s set on the opening night of the “America’s Most Wanted Music Festival” tour. The summer-long tour features Weezy and his Young Money crew, Young Jeezy, Soulja Boy and S.O.D.M.G., Drake, and Jeremih. Pleasure P, formerly of Pretty Ricky, also made it on to the bill.
Drake, whose birth name is Aubrey Drake Graham, just signed a deal with Universal Records that affords him a $2 million advance. The “Degrassi” TV star called Soulja “the smartest artist of our generation, period,” on “The Ralphie Radio Show” in June. It seems the respect is mutual.
“Drake is a real dude. Most rappers, they don’t like to give the other rappers props,” Soulja Boy said. “He showed me my respect. Drake is a good artist.”
At least when it comes to artistry, it seems most of the rappers on the bill are taking cues from the headliner. Even after the first show, Soulja Boy already found himself inspired and pushed by Weezy.
“I just got through watching Wayne’s show. I’m about to go back to the drawing board,” revealed Soulja. “I feel like, my next show, I just gotta go back and critique everything a little bit, but we straight though.”
However, I’m sure one part of the performance that will not change is the end. The crowd inside Toyota Pavilion at Montage Mountain exploded when Soulja dropped “Turn My Swag On.” The first few rows of the venue near came to a boil soon after, when the 19-year-old began tossing out $100 bills in to the crowd. MTV News reporter Sway Calloway estimated that Soulja gave back at least $5,000 to the crowd. But for the Chicago-born rapper, the money itself wasn’t much of a driving factor behind the move.
“I flash back in my head to when I was 15, 14 years old, just wanted to become a rap star,” he said. “For me to make it, and to become a millionaire and for my dreams to come true, all that just be flashing through my head.”
Soulja Boy takes his dream pretty seriously as well. The rapper turned 19 the night after the Montage Mountain show and flew with his crew to Cancun to celebrate. While in Mexico, Soulja saw video footage of our interview via a link I posted on Twitter. Soon thereafter, Soulja Boy re-tweeted the link to his 1.2 million followers, began following me on the site and uploaded the video to his own YouTube account. That set off a chain reaction of link postings on the Internet, capped by 50 Cent’s website, ThisIs50.com, embedding the video. As of press time, the footage surpassed over a half million views.
Sure, these numbers seem staggering for a video produced and distributed by a media outlet in NEPA. But for Soulja, this is nothing out of the ordinary. The artist essentially built his fan base through the utilization of social networking sites — primarily MySpace and YouTube. He’s used this following to propel his career and sell records and ring tones. His digital sales and ring tones sold figures are both well past five million, and his YouTube views are upwards of half a billion.