Every few years there’s one of them: the chicken dance, the hustle, the macarena…those ear worm songs and accompanying dances that are so unbelievably hooky, you can’t get them out of your head.
The folks at the Idolator music blog have an interesting mention about what the latest of these song/dance combos, “Crank Dat” by Soulja Boy, has to teach us about Web 2.0 marketing. From that post, I followed the trail to an interesting posting by Xiaochang Li over at the Convergence Culture blog.
Do you have thoughts on viral marketing and entertainment? Is it democratizing the “star-maker machinery” or dumbing it down? We’ll talk about the Soulja Boy phenomenon on our November 7th/10th show. Let us know what you think!
There are a ton of different versions, remakes and re-interpretations of the song/dance out there. Here’s the “official” version:
[edit] I should have added that if you want to follow the argument, there’s a very interesting discussion at blackweb2.0, which includes more of the musical side of the phenom in particular, and the implications for musicians marketing their work.
There’s a fascinating related phenomenon in mainstream stars getting on the social media bandwagon. You’ve got Alanis Morissette making a lo-fi satire of “My Humps” and posting it on YouTube:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=W91sqAs-_-g
And the Barenaked Ladies recording songs in their bathroom and posting them on Revver:
http://one.revver.com/find/video/barenaked+ladies
Musicians seem to be saying “I can’t beat them, so I’ll join them with no-budget parodies and songs from my bathroom”. Is it a desperate grasp at relevance, or canny 21st century marketing?
A bit of both, I expect.
As for your question about the ‘star-maker machinery’, it is democratizing it, but it’s also multiplying it. I refer you to Seth Godin’s recent post on the shrinking duration of time on the NYT’s best seller list. The same applies to musical acts, whether they bubbled up from YouTube or came from my traditional sources:
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/10/meatball-mond-4.html
Yes, interesting. One of the things I find really interesting about the Soulja Boy phenom is that even though the single is everywhere on YouTube etc, people are still buying the single (it’s #1 on the Billboard 100)
Viral marketing is responsible for democratizing celebrity status. Nowadays, all you need is mass appeal and with web2.0 it’s easier to get than ever. YUUUAAAH!…who knew.
Soulja Boy has got to be the most demeaning song ever and our 5 6 7 year old girls singing this song.
Spiderman that HO means toh man would ejaculate on his hand and flick it at the woman like a web.
Supoerman that HO means the man ejaculates on the woman’s back and the woman rolls on the sheet and then stands up so the sheet sticks to her.
See this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtVZWgJksl8
i love you
Will,
Oh. I had no idea that’s what ‘superman’ and ‘spiderman’ referred to in this context. I believe that what I have heard on radio, (and perhaps what gets played on BET and Much Music) is the ‘radio edit’ aka ‘clean version’ of the song, which is also what, to my ears, it sounds like those sweet kids are singing.
I must agree with Will that the song is one of the most disgusting set of lyrics I have heard. And I’m no prude. However, as a middle school teacher, I was quickly informed by my 21YO son and my students that it was not only about ejaculation but also about rape of a sleeping woman. I will absolutely and in no way allow it in my classroom or on the students’ web sites. That’s just my humble opinion. At least when people know what it really means they can decide for themselves.
I do love your podcasts — I just discovered them a few weeks ago so it’s fun catching up. Thanks for the hard work of putting them together.
Just found this Soulja Boy comic and couldn’t resist adding it here for everyone’s enjoyment. It’s from Married to the Sea. Scroll down.
http://www.marriedtothesea.com/mtts-archives/mttsarchive-jul08.php
(This one is SFW but on this blog many aren’t, so be careful.)
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