If you haven’t heard or seen the song and dance for “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” you must have been living under a rock. Actually, more like a boulder.
I take that back, the only way you could not have seen this dance is if you’ve been living under Boulder, Colo.
The Soulja Boy is a dance based around the rap song “Crank That (Soulja Boy),” by the Atlanta resident and minor (born in 1990!) DeAndre Cortez Way, better known as Soulja Boy. The song is featured on his album “Souljaboytellem.com.” Feeling redundant yet?
The dance has become an unbelievable hit, spawning countless low-quality YouTube videos of people doing their own renditions of the dance. The people who make these video tributes and dance in them are from all walks of life: cheerleader-esque white girls during suburban sleepovers , uber-young ballet students going ape during their break from plies , even my high school band teacher, Mr. Rusty Shedd, stunning a captive audience .
At this point, I don’t know if the dance or song can get any more ubiquitous. But frankly, I’m not sure if Soulja Boy would roll his eyes at whites pushing 40 doing his dance or just keep laughing all the way to the bank.
That is, of course, if he’s old enough to open an account. I’m sorry if I sound bitter, I’m just coming to terms with the fact that people who were born after me are starting to become more famous than me.
In any case, how has a 17-year-old from Atlanta been able to capture the national consciousness?
The situation just shows that with enough downward pushing and stomping, the music industry can cram anything down our throats, as long as it’s reasonably fun.
Soulja Boy came out of nowhere. Essentially, Soulja Boy put up some of his local hit tracks online, and Southern rap talent manager and impresario Mr. Collipark took notice and thereafter went to bat for the Boy.
Then, thanks to the hype that only a rap debut album on a major label can create, the song was everywhere.
With respect to the music, the song is aggressively mediocre. It features a steel drum idea recycled from 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P,” fat orchestra hits, and not so much rapping as languidly spoken boasts and yelling.
So, what took “Soulja Boy” from just a song to a phenomenon? The visual component: In this case, it was a dance.
The funny thing about this interaction between hit songs and popular dances is that it goes all the way back to Chubby Checker and “The Twist.”
It’s essentially the same dynamic. The kids start doing a dance or an artist invents a dance. Then, once a label catches on, a record comes out with a song detailing the steps involved or just how great the dance is, and the dance and song proliferate.
This pattern has played itself out throughout the decades, from the Mashed Potato to the Swim to the Hustle to the YMCA to the Macarena to the Rockaway ““ all with varying degrees of success.
Why have these dances been able to infiltrate culture so easily? Most obvious is because it’s an added dimension to the song. It’s something to do while the song is playing, making it more exciting for the ever-jaded body politic of young music buyers.
On another level, it’s a form of communion between the artist and the lowly consumer. It’s the artists’ way of saying, “This dance is cool, and you can be cool too in three easy steps.” After that, the dance just builds on itself. People see that other people know the dance, and they feel like they need to know the dance.
That, my friends, is the reason why YouTube is clogged with reams of people who ordinarily wouldn’t pay attention to a rap song from Atlanta or do the Soulja Boy.
Including my high school band teacher.
To “Crank That” feedback, e-mail Ayres at jayres@media.ucla.edu.