Soulja Boy, Crank That

2007

Date: 2 May 2007 · Place: Batesville, Mississippi, then YouTube and MySpace · Figures: DeAndre Cortez Way aka Soulja Boy, performer · Tags: Native Internet Music, Dance Tutorial, Soundclick 01. A Sixteen Year Old Distributing Through SoundClick DeAndre Cortez Way, sixteen and recording in Batesville, Mississippi, releases Crank That (Soulja Boy) through SoundClick in 2007 and uploads the dance tutorial to YouTube on 2 May 2007. The instrumental is built in FL Studio using a steel drum preset from the free Fruity DrumSynth Live plugin. The song reaches number one on the Billboard Hot 100 on 15 September 2007 and stays there for seven weeks, the first song to do so on the basis of independent online distribution before label signing. 02. The First Native-Internet Pop Star Soulja Boy proves the YouTube-MySpace-SoundClick stack can produce a chart-topping hit without traditional radio or A&R infrastructure. The accompanying dance, demonstrated in his tutorial video, becomes the first widely-imitated viral dance, a format every subsequent platform from Vine to TikTok inherits. He is the prototype the industry studies for the next decade as it attempts to engineer what he produced alone. Sources • KnowYourMeme, 'Crank That' • Billboard, 'Soulja Boy, Crank That chart history' • Soulja Boy, original YouTube tutorial (youtube.com/watch?v=8UFIYGkROII)