by Mariel Concepcion, N.Y. |
December 23, 2008 2:51 EST
Other tracks on the album include promotional single "Turn My Swag On," where Soulja Boy addresses the "haters" over double-speed drums and a heavy bassline. On "Easy" Soulja Boy calls himself "Soulja Boy Pacino" and "Soulja Boy Mandigo" with flutes in the background. Chris Brown wrote the boastful "Yamaha Mama" ("My neck taste like chocolate/Now take a lick," Soulja Boy rhymes atop piano riffs), and second single "Kiss Me Thru the Phone," featuring Sammie and produced by Jim Jonsin, has Soulja Boy rapping alongside a videogame-like beat about longing for a lover.
Soulja Boy launched a Let's Go Platinum in One Week campaign through his various online portals, where he's telling fans to "get ready for the album and help me go platinum," he says. "I go by the motto that it's never enough money. When I was 16, I said I wanted to become a millionaire. When I got my first million, I wanted more. Now that I've gone platinum with my first album, I want to break that in a week this time around. No one's done it since [Lil] Wayne [who did it with the "Tha Carter III" in June of this year]. If I go 100% and grind, I think it's possible."
Last month, Soulja Boy launched an animated/live-action cartoon, by the creators of Adult Swim's "Robot Chicken," on his Web site. He plays a celebrity teenager that has to go back to class and finish the school year. Soulja Boy, Arab and friend Jabar are animated characters, while the rest of the cast, including Alfonso Ribeiro—who played Carlton in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and here portrays the school principal—are actors. Soulja Boy hopes a TV network will pick up the series and is targeting Comedy Central or Cartoon Network.
On MTV, Soulja Boy has an episode of "Super Sweet 16" dubbed "My Super Swag 18," covering the celebration of his 18th birthday that took place during the summer. He hopes to branch out into acting through the William Morris Agency, and although he hasn't come across a script he's interested in—"I'm a comedic person. I want my first movie role to reflect my actual personality"—he hopes to delve further into it in 2009.
He began a promotional tour Dec. 1 that lead up to the album release, and a more extensive mid-January trek is in the works. For the latter, Soulja Boy hopes to partner with fellow rapper Bow Wow, for whom he recently produced the track "Marco Polo."
Now, about those kicks. Soulja Boy recently launched a sneaker called the Soulja Boy Block Star sneaker and a Soulja Boy clothing line with the apparel company Yums. He partnered with Yums' in-house designer Tex for the venture and also bought stock in the company.
"I was on the Chris Brown tour with Bow Wow last year, and we had a concert stop in Dallas, Texas. I brought out a local Texas act called Lil Will onstage with me, but when we were backstage I noticed they had these shoes and these hats," Soulja Boy says. "I asked them where they got it from because I wanted to get some. So, I hooked up with the owner, I told him what I wanted to do, we did a deal and after that it's been Yums ever since."
Other Soulja Boy ventures are generating revenue already. "Really, I don't depend on royalty checks to make money. Those only come but every six months," he says. "How I make most money is from shows. I get up to $75,000 for each, and I might do up to 20 shows a month."
The second-highest income source for Soulja Boy comes from Xcaliber a club he recently purchased on the north side of his hometown of Atlanta. "We do teen nights and 18-and-up nights," he says.
A third source is his BMI publishing deal and from his tracks for Bow Wow and Lil Vic ("Get Silly"). The smallest amount of revenue comes from his YouTube channel and his official Web site. On YouTube Soulja Boy has the third-most-watched music channel of the week with 558,283 views, the second-most-watched for the month of November with 4.4 million views and the fifth-most-watched of all time at 258 million views, after artists like Chris Brown and Britney Spears. His MySpace page has 98.2 million plays, 55.8 million views and 855,174 fans.
He's also planning on launching a videogame next year with an undisclosed game maker. That deal, Soulja Boy says, came about the same way he landed his record deal—from the Internet. "I put up a video on YouTube challenging Xbox Live players around the world. Next thing you know I got an e-mail from a videogame company—in the same way Collipark e-mailed me about signing me—offering me an opportunity to set up a videogame," he says.
Soulja Boy continues to build his music empire in other ways. In 2004, he launched his independent label, SOD Entertainment (which stands for Stacks on Deck), and recently signed a one-off deal with Universal Republic for his group Show Stoppers' first single, "Whoop Rico." Although it didn't make him the money he's accustomed to, it was an experience that he hopes will help him down the line. "I always thought of myself as being hot, but I'm not going to be hot forever," Soulja Boy says. "I wanted to test the waters with them before I released my solo artist, Arab. I want to have an artist with a No. 1 song in the country. I want to have the next big thing. I don't want the next big thing to come kill my career. I want to be the boss."
Arab, who he's known since the eighth grade, will be the first artist to follow in his footsteps with an album planned for as early as fourth-quarter 2009, yet Soulja Boy has his hesitations. "That project is tricky," he says. "He's my best friend and I want him to be ready, but I can't make him be something he doesn't want to be. I want an artist that's got passion and drive. I want to see them in the studio, on the Internet promoting themselves—but I can't force him to do something he's not ready to do."
Arab isn't the only fellow Atlantan Soulja Boy hopes to help. This month, he tapped into charity work, partnering with DJ Hit Man for a Toys in the Hood toy drive, where he is giving away Christmas gifts to 100 families in Atlanta.
"People know I do good business," he says. "If I endorse something or say I'm doing something, then it's getting done and it's getting done right. With great power," he says, quoting a line from the "Spider-Man" movie, "comes great responsibility."
Soulja Boy launched a Let's Go Platinum in One Week campaign through his various online portals, where he's telling fans to "get ready for the album and help me go platinum," he says. "I go by the motto that it's never enough money. When I was 16, I said I wanted to become a millionaire. When I got my first million, I wanted more. Now that I've gone platinum with my first album, I want to break that in a week this time around. No one's done it since [Lil] Wayne [who did it with the "Tha Carter III" in June of this year]. If I go 100% and grind, I think it's possible."
Last month, Soulja Boy launched an animated/live-action cartoon, by the creators of Adult Swim's "Robot Chicken," on his Web site. He plays a celebrity teenager that has to go back to class and finish the school year. Soulja Boy, Arab and friend Jabar are animated characters, while the rest of the cast, including Alfonso Ribeiro—who played Carlton in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and here portrays the school principal—are actors. Soulja Boy hopes a TV network will pick up the series and is targeting Comedy Central or Cartoon Network.
On MTV, Soulja Boy has an episode of "Super Sweet 16" dubbed "My Super Swag 18," covering the celebration of his 18th birthday that took place during the summer. He hopes to branch out into acting through the William Morris Agency, and although he hasn't come across a script he's interested in—"I'm a comedic person. I want my first movie role to reflect my actual personality"—he hopes to delve further into it in 2009.
He began a promotional tour Dec. 1 that lead up to the album release, and a more extensive mid-January trek is in the works. For the latter, Soulja Boy hopes to partner with fellow rapper Bow Wow, for whom he recently produced the track "Marco Polo."
Now, about those kicks. Soulja Boy recently launched a sneaker called the Soulja Boy Block Star sneaker and a Soulja Boy clothing line with the apparel company Yums. He partnered with Yums' in-house designer Tex for the venture and also bought stock in the company.
"I was on the Chris Brown tour with Bow Wow last year, and we had a concert stop in Dallas, Texas. I brought out a local Texas act called Lil Will onstage with me, but when we were backstage I noticed they had these shoes and these hats," Soulja Boy says. "I asked them where they got it from because I wanted to get some. So, I hooked up with the owner, I told him what I wanted to do, we did a deal and after that it's been Yums ever since."
Other Soulja Boy ventures are generating revenue already. "Really, I don't depend on royalty checks to make money. Those only come but every six months," he says. "How I make most money is from shows. I get up to $75,000 for each, and I might do up to 20 shows a month."
The second-highest income source for Soulja Boy comes from Xcaliber a club he recently purchased on the north side of his hometown of Atlanta. "We do teen nights and 18-and-up nights," he says.
A third source is his BMI publishing deal and from his tracks for Bow Wow and Lil Vic ("Get Silly"). The smallest amount of revenue comes from his YouTube channel and his official Web site. On YouTube Soulja Boy has the third-most-watched music channel of the week with 558,283 views, the second-most-watched for the month of November with 4.4 million views and the fifth-most-watched of all time at 258 million views, after artists like Chris Brown and Britney Spears. His MySpace page has 98.2 million plays, 55.8 million views and 855,174 fans.
He's also planning on launching a videogame next year with an undisclosed game maker. That deal, Soulja Boy says, came about the same way he landed his record deal—from the Internet. "I put up a video on YouTube challenging Xbox Live players around the world. Next thing you know I got an e-mail from a videogame company—in the same way Collipark e-mailed me about signing me—offering me an opportunity to set up a videogame," he says.
Soulja Boy continues to build his music empire in other ways. In 2004, he launched his independent label, SOD Entertainment (which stands for Stacks on Deck), and recently signed a one-off deal with Universal Republic for his group Show Stoppers' first single, "Whoop Rico." Although it didn't make him the money he's accustomed to, it was an experience that he hopes will help him down the line. "I always thought of myself as being hot, but I'm not going to be hot forever," Soulja Boy says. "I wanted to test the waters with them before I released my solo artist, Arab. I want to have an artist with a No. 1 song in the country. I want to have the next big thing. I don't want the next big thing to come kill my career. I want to be the boss."
Arab, who he's known since the eighth grade, will be the first artist to follow in his footsteps with an album planned for as early as fourth-quarter 2009, yet Soulja Boy has his hesitations. "That project is tricky," he says. "He's my best friend and I want him to be ready, but I can't make him be something he doesn't want to be. I want an artist that's got passion and drive. I want to see them in the studio, on the Internet promoting themselves—but I can't force him to do something he's not ready to do."
Arab isn't the only fellow Atlantan Soulja Boy hopes to help. This month, he tapped into charity work, partnering with DJ Hit Man for a Toys in the Hood toy drive, where he is giving away Christmas gifts to 100 families in Atlanta.
"People know I do good business," he says. "If I endorse something or say I'm doing something, then it's getting done and it's getting done right. With great power," he says, quoting a line from the "Spider-Man" movie, "comes great responsibility."
Comments