Stay Connected
Atlanta Black Star/Entertainment
Entertainment

Bobby Shmurda Hopes to Match Kim Kardashian with New App That Puts You in the Video

Posted byBy Christina Montford | Published on: CommentsComments (1)

Screen Shot 2014-11-12 at 11.24.35 AMIf you’ve ever watched the viral “Hot Boy” video by Bobby Shmurda wishing you could be a part of it, we’ve got news for you: There’s an app for that.

The Shmoney Gram app uses a simple concept: Users can take or upload an existing image, select one of the provided templates, and generate a gif of their Shmoney dance. There are more than a dozen templates to choose from. You can pick anything from doing the Shmoney dance in the original “Hot Boy” video to doing the dance alongside Chris Brown in a clip that uploaded to Instagram in August.

“Hot Boy” hit No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100, last week. “Hot Boy” and the follow-up single, “Bobby B-tch,” are featured on the rapper’s debut EP, Shmurda She Wrote, released Tuesday, Nov. 11.

Shmurda is only the newest star to join the ranks of celebrities releasing apps that put you virtually in their lives. One of the most recent and notable names making money off of this trend is reality television star Kim Kardashian.

Her mobile game Kim Kardashian: Hollywood allows users to live her life, jet setting from L.A. to Miami and all over the world. The object of the game is to work your way up to the A list just as Kardashian did, dating the right people to gain friends, wealth and fame.

The game made $43 million in the first three months it was available. In fact, the game has earned more for its backing company, Glu Mobile, than all their other apps combined. The company expects that the game will make a whopping $200 million by the end of the year.

“It’s just a fun little game,” Kardashian said on the Today Show in August. “It’s kind of like when people get into Candy Crush so much…it’s just something fun to do.”

Rapper Paul Wall tried to go this new mobile game route in 2011 with his app Battle Rap Star, but it didn’t reach nearly as much success as Kanye West’s wife.

Whether Bobby Shmurda’s game will break the bank like Kim K’s or just fizzle like Paul Wall’s is yet to be determined. His fans will certainly have their say.

 

Still independent.

We hope this story was worth your time. For over 14 years, Atlanta Black Star has stayed Black-owned and independently run. We didn't get here by waiting on ad budgets that were never built to prioritize us. Our readers did that.

Corporate support for Black media has always been thin. Outlets like ours get roughly 1% of the $170 billion spent on U.S. advertising each year, and that margin is shrinking further as advertisers walk back the DEI-linked commitments they made in 2020. That's the backdrop. It's not why we're asking.

The wider picture isn't any steadier. Newspaper ad revenue has fallen more than 80% since 2005, and local newsrooms are closing at a rate of roughly two a week nationwide. When outlets go under, it's rarely the ones built to center a Black perspective from the ground up that get to stick around.

We know a request for support isn't why you came here. But without readers choosing to fund this work directly, the depth of reporting we can do at home and abroad shrinks along with everyone else's. If you're not in a position to give, that doesn't change how much we value you as a reader.

If you are able to, a recurring contribution does more for us than a single one-time gift, because it lets us plan the next investigation instead of just the next invoice. It takes about 30 seconds, no long form, no account. Thank you for continuing to support independent journalism and freedom of the press.

Give once Give monthly Support another way

Related Stories

Back to top