Tell 'Em - Soulja Boy Cover by Neal Medlyn

Hi. It's me, Neal, again.

Today's number is my cheap-keyboard cover of 'Soulja Boy Tell Em' by Soulja Boy Tell Em from the album iSouljaBoyTellEm.

One take, folks!

Punk rock!

I really think too much about this Soulja Boy Tell Em fellow. Not a hundred percent sure he goes by that full name but I like it so that's what I say his name is. I also sometimes spell the first word 'Souljah' in a nod to Sista Souljah who I had a crazy crush on in high school, without bothering to try and make any of that add up or listen too carefully to anything she said. It was enough for me that she did the intro to that song of Public Enemy's that may or may not have called for the murder of John McCain way back in 1991.

OK, I'm sure that's not what the song was about, but, like I say, I was deeply into my fantasies and not so meticulous about making sure they matched up with reality.

Anyhoo, Soulja Boy!

He's the ultimate American figure in many ways and this song is a brief treatise on the constant replacement and radical forward-ness of American pop culture. 'Get out the way, old shit, I'm 18 and I made a lot of money and 'if you ain't respecting that, then tell me what are you respecting?'' The contstant teenager that is America, always shouting and making mistakes and fucking shit up but somehow managing at the same time to be brilliant.

I mean, of course America does a bunch of horrible shit and this isn't some gooey eyed rethinking of America because of Barack Obama or something. This is what I like about America no matter who the president is or what wars we stupidly start or how many of our citizens we fuck over in blatant contradiction of what we supposedly stand for.

Fuck Prop 8!

Despite all that, there we are, there our culture is: standing up and dissing the old, re-inventing the new. We're not arguing over whether something is French enough or building more and more memorials to shit we did wrong like the Germans.

We're 18 years old with our name on our shades, standing onstage with the gall to declare that we're the best.


Long Live Soulja Boy!

NM

PS - Special thanks to Brendan for telling me the tidbit that Soulja Boy looks at himself in the mirror before going onstage and says "Soulja Boy, tell 'em. What? The Truth." The hubris!!

PPS - Special thanks to Andrew Dinwiddie for also, in addition to Brendan, preaching the gospel of Soulja Boy to me. I was and am too much of an old fart to have the audacity to have some of the above opinions. But again, that's why I'm an American!

PPPS - A poem from Our Hit Parader Ada Calhoun from 2000:

"Ode to America"
We do lots of bad things.
We are like a big-haired girl in a tight shirt at a party.
We cannot be stopped.

PPPPS - Long Live Soulja Boy!

CLICK TO DOWNLOAD:Tell 'Em - Soulja Boy Cover by Neal Medlyn