Soulja Boy — Crank That
A 16-year-old self-produced a ringtone rap that conquered MySpace, YouTube, and every school talent show. The Superman dance was inescapable, the song spent weeks at #1, and nobody asked permission from traditional radio.
In summer 2007, DeAndre Way — performing as Soulja Boy — self-produced "Crank That" and uploaded it, bypassing radio gatekeeping entirely. The song spread through MySpace and YouTube dance tutorials, each kid adding their own interpretation of the Superman dance move. By fall 2007, it spent seven non-consecutive weeks at #1 on the Hot 100, a staggering achievement for a song that ignited on the internet first.
The records piled up fast: within a year, "Crank That" had sold more than three million digital downloads — the first rapper ever to hit that mark in the US — and earned a Grammy nomination for Best Rap Song, losing to Kanye West's "Good Life." The instructional dance video alone passed 27 million YouTube views at a time when that number was nearly unheard of.
The single's success proved that viral internet culture could now dictate the charts, and Soulja Boy's debut album souljaboytellem.com (also 2007) rode the wave. "Crank That" epitomized ringtone-rap's cultural moment — that brief era when a $2 novelty ringtone could chart higher than most records. The dance faded, but its influence lives on in every TikTok choreography.
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