Soulja Boy started the week trolling many of today’s hottest rappers and just like that, after a few years, his name is back in the headlines.
On Wednesday (Jan. 16), the 28-year-old said he was the first rapper to blow up on the Internet and was the first to make a lot of money off streaming sales with his 2007 cut “Crank That, which rapper Bow Wow agreed with. Soulja also said he should be compensated for being a pioneer.
“I was the first rapper on YouTube,” Soulja explained. “I showed these artists how to be social media famous and social media savvy. No artist was on Instagram and Twitter. Let’s be real. Now every artist in the world has an Instagram, Twitter, YouTube page and doing blogs. I was doing that 10 years ago as a teenager, and people had to catch up.”
Bow didn’t say that Soulja should receive his requested 5 percent commission fee, but he did say how much of an impact the Atlanta raised rhymer had on rap.
“The way he came in the game, he came in very original and left a print on hip-hop to where it ruffled the feathers with a lot of the OGs, the hip-hop artists that came before us,” Bow told TMZ.
The “Growing Up Hip-Hop: Atlanta” star also brought up the people who lashed out at Soulja when he became famous over a decade ago, people like Ice-T, who seemingly didn’t like that rap was going digital.
“This n—- single-handedly killed hip-hop,” said Ice on a 2008 mixtape.
“Ice-T had a problem with it,” said Bow, referencing the short beef. “My Uncle Snoop [Dogg] had a problem with it at first and you know, he kind of created all of these rappers that you see nowadays that’s doing what they doing. Soulja was the first as far as like the younger demo. First person to do that. All credit goes to him right now. Shout out to Draco.”
You can see the Bow’s interview below.
