Steve 'Flash' JuonAt this point Soulja Boy is undeniably going in reverse at full speed. “Big Draco” at least showed some small signs of life for the controversial rapper turned entrepreneur, but feuding with Bow Wow wasn’t the right way to get the spotlight back. “Big Draco 2” didn’t even have that mediocre beef to drum up any interest. Now inexplicably we’ve got “Big Draco 3.” Hollywood tries to juice up sequels with big name stars joining the franchise, a ridiculous budget for special effects, or a huge advertising campaign and a summer release date that avoids going head to head with any other big pictures. Soulja Boy has none of that here. From the jump on “100 Grand” he’s not even trying. “Even Ray Charles could see that I’m the man.” 30 years ago? Maybe that line would have worked. Not today. “You is not Big Draco, that’s the reason why you flopped.” Bruh — do you know what they say about throwing stones when you live in a glass house? If not look it up.
It’s difficult to understand the complete apathy with which SB delivers his performances on the third installment of this trilogy. The bass thumping on “UFO’s & Satellite’s” (the weird use of apostrophes is all his) has more energy than his bars. Even AutoTune can’t correct the fact he just repeats the song’s title when he runs out of things to say. “I think I seen a martian.” I think he was high enough when he recorded it to believe that. I refuse to believe he wrote any of this down. He walked into a recording studio (probably one in his own home), did one take, and walked out.
This is a rapper who is beyond giving a fuck. Arguably the internet has a large hand in that decision, because everybody rode hard on him for his ridiculous claims and legal woes. Instead of spitting punchlines (which wasn’t ever his forte anyway) he became one. In the curious modern day world though, even negative publicity is good publicity, thanks to things like “engagement” and “trending topics.” On top of this you have a subset of the populace that loves being contrarian just for the sake of trolling other people. They willingly embrace things that are mediocre or bad and proclaim with enthusiasm that they’re the greatest. In fact many do it for so long they forget they were trolling and genuinely believe terrible actors, artists or politicians are actually good people.
On that basis “Big Draco 3” has already won. “Riding around town, it’s going down, baby let’s do it.” Yeah DeAndre, you did it. I’ll be the first to admit you’ve reached a new level of notoriety that can sustain you for the rest of your life. It’s weird to say I admire him for figuring this out, but from his first hit to now, he came up with a way to keep people talking even when his music wouldn’t. That means some curious person like you or me will probably still be checking for him ten years from now when “Big Draco 13” comes out. In the beginning Soulja Boy was a bad rapper with one super viral song, but now he’s super viral in general and doesn’t even need to make good songs. He’s “Gone” full circle.
I genuinely detest the time I spent listening to this album, but I commend Soulja Boy for getting me to do it in the first place. For however long he can sustain the mechanical royalties, the pittance that Spotify pays for clicks, and the loyal fans who show up when he live streams to donate their hard earned cash, he’ll be able to maintain a career with albums exactly like this. He’s won. He no longer has to try. He can coast for the rest of his life.