It's all about persistence, it's all about new materials, all about generating interest for the digital public. To listen to you know what i'm saying they had found, whoever the was popping at that time then they'll go there and download that song for free, like i'm, going to give it to you at the club they'll hit down, though they hit play. They go. You don't don't don't show they're like what the is this about men and man they're like damn this.

Oh it's smart today. What that five head did ahead of his time. He was mistaking his own one of the most legendary finessers in the rap game. Of course, i'm talking about big draco aka soulja boy.

Now, not only can he morph into any other trending rapper, like he's ditto, but this man has systematically got into the bag for over a decade now using some of the most creative tactics. I remember back in the day, soulja boy was selling retweets for like four dollars. He would follow you for two dollars. He had that was just the beginning of a long list of schemes and finesses.

The big soldier would pull off from hacking limewire when he was 17 to being sued by another guy named soulja boy. I mean who could forget the infamous 400 million dollar contract. You know this 400 million dollar deal um. That was up wait.

He said 400 deal confirmed this. I i still, they think they lowballed me, though two or three billion billion dollar contract. You know this 400 million dollar deal um. That was up.

Can you finally speak on that situation? Yeah yeah, basically man. I just got involved into like some some big business type. You know they're saying that rappers ain't involved in it. Yes, this is the legend of big soldier and we're gon na get into all this.

But before we do, let me show you my songs. This is an artist's name. I i don't even know where to start, because big soulja's basically been in the game for damn near 15 years, he's not even 30, yet people don't realize he made all his own feelings, shitty computers, when he was 17. beat.

He was singing, he was a good worker. Most of the songs are produced by him written by him, but soulja boy's biggest talent was not the music, it was the hustle mentality. How do i get people to hear my stuff? That was his philosophy. He was grinding on soundclick back in 2005., sounds 20.

000 plays a day, making 99 cents per listen splitting it in half with the company, that's about 10 racks a day. Then he moved to myspace. That was the new frontier check it out. 92.

000 friends. Sending it out now the competition when i ain't doing the show you can hit me up on the computer. When i ain't on the computer, you can give me a better show from 17 000 friends to like 300, some thousand friends in like 10 months and how he was doing it every song he's made. He would call this website, in my face out, he's so good with his digital marketing that he named his 2007 studio, album souljaboytellum.com.

He named his album his website and his website was his album. It was he got genius to know about. Him was with crank that this was bad guys. The scroll was waiting for me guys, i'm sorry.

I guess i i didn't know that was the wild west. If you were on limewire, you were rolling, the dice praying you didn't get a virus and soulja boy knew how to manipulate the search results on limewire. He would upload crank that under a different song name, whatever was popping at the time. Eminem 50 cent britney spears.

He would name it that people would download it expecting one thing and ended up getting cranked at and it blew him up to where his album so ollie's getting cute. First, oh, i was just gon na get guys guys guys you guys, you guys. Would your boy tell him 50 000 copies in the states, even though that got a 3 out of 10 rating, almost unanimously by every single music critic? But it didn't matter. He signed a deal with interscope, so all right, what song huh a thousand copies in the states, this album souljaboytelem.com sold and made a ton of money the next bit of genius marketing.

I hope everybody remembers the hits the ring challenges through. That was actually a voicemail that he set up, so fans could send the messages which is genius because the song became a smash hit and he collected all those numbers and built the database of fans. And, what's funny is this song became so big. You had people trying to ring up the number that were outside of the country and they didn't use the right international dialing code.

They ended up calling this family in manchester england with the same 12-digit number and their was getting lit up for like a whole year. Until they finally decommissioned the phone number and now, if you're in the states and call that number, it goes to an unknown commercial advertiser in georgia, anyways soulja boy kept making money throughout the 2000s and the 2010s came around and he needed to adapt. Myspace had already gone, facebook was kind of whack and even without a hit song, he knew he did honestly, though platform, so he went to twitter and he started selling retweets for four dollars, just diversifying his income around that time. He also had to adjust to the sound of the music that was popping in 2012.

It was chicago drill, music, that's when he somehow ended up on a classic track with chief keef called foreign cars, which is an underground smash hit. Now this song is good and at the same time the engineer did soulja boy super dirty and put his auto tune in the wrong key, and to this day it's the funniest transition. When you go from sosa's verse to soulja boy's verse right later in 2013, unfortunately, soulja boy and chief keef had this massive falling out right ball out, stole big soldier's chain and soulja boy sent threats to chief keef over facebook. Then he leaked his phone number telling fans to tell sosa that he was looking for basically from then on soulja boy just started beefing with all sorts of people on twitter and instagram.

You went after chris brown quavo. Then he had a big beef with rico reckless from chicago. You showed up at social boy's house at his house. He put a hundred thousand on your head.

Yeah yeah, like they wanted people this right. Here he put a hundred dollars up on my head. It was people that was like, oh, you can shoot for that. They can't do that right.

There, i'm, like that's like a snitch and you wrong. I'm just gon na go to his house and knock on this door. Okay, yeah popped up at his door that went out the back though, and then tried to go to dubai. This was at the same time that people like dj academics were making fun of soldier boy for claiming he bought a six million dollar mansion when in reality he was renting off airbnb.

So it was basically the entire internet versus soulja boy right. He was taking on all beefs and then he allegedly had this million dollar deal with a poker company called celebrity poke. 400 million dollar deal um. That was up.

Can you finally speak on that situation? Yeah yeah? Basically, it was a new contract that was signed by that by the government and nobody else had this contract with us never said. So. That's why it was a big deal. So what it was.

It wasn't 400 million dollars going into my pocket directly, but it was 400 million dollar deal with the worth of the deal rules. Now, anytime, someone comes out and says they signed a 400 million dollar deal out of the blue, most people they turn around. They go. No, you didn't long story short.

The 400 million dollar number was basically a benchmark that the company wanted to hit the contract capped out at 400 million. But in no way in hell was anybody getting 400. by reading deeper into the company. They were making like 13 dollars a month or something which i mean is not bad, but nowhere near enough to warrant a 400 million dollar valuation that thing kind of fell through.

But you got ta respect, soulja boy's ability to make business moves, even if they don't work. Now. By far my favorite move that soulja boy made was in 2018. Everybody remembers when he launched soldier watchdog.

How much did i make yesterday? It's 233 hundred and 000 dollars and 88 cents. Thank you sojuwatch.com. Now this was smart because it looked awful. It looks like a russian website where you go to buy like a kidney on the underground market or something you know.

It looks super bootleg and all the blogs and all the pages were clowning soulja boy, because the website looked so bad. It was trash. It was a basic shopify store, no custom themes, no attempt at any branding all he was doing, was drag and dropping these cheap chinese products onto his website and the business model is all dropped and to boil it down he's just the middleman right. He doesn't pay for inventory, he just puts the product, he does it.

Then they do this like 12 times takes your order. Then a chinese supplier makes and ships the product. Now people are making some serious cash doing this, but usually you got ta spend a ton of money to build that customer trust. You got ta spend money to make ads that draw people into your store for soulja boy.

The opposite was true. It's almost like the worse. The looked the more people were drawn to the website. It was like the greatest case of anti-marketing.

I've ever seen the delivery, the product. It was all so bad that it worked, and while everybody was clowning it no soulja boy went on a press run right. He went to breakfast complex. He knew exactly what he had to do to generate that traffic and guess what, in just 28 days over 2.2 million people visited soldierwatch.com now there's various different websites that calculate how much they thought he made a soulja boy posted a photo, a screenshot of his earnings For one day and of course, that's net revenue, not net profit, but all in yeah how much he made in that one month on the low end, low end low end low.

She passed out 530 grand, probably a lot of that. What i find beautiful is, while everybody was laughing at him, he was making bank bro, he had no music. That was relevant, but he was making big money. People talk about six, nine as being the greatest marketer in the current day and age, but i put soulja boy up there against anybody as one of the most legendary schemers and finessers legendary, oh yeah man.

I just felt like i had to pay my respects if y'all enjoyed this video, make sure you smash a like. Please subscribe with notifications on, and i will see you in the next one. Okay, that's interesting! Okay, guys guys you got ta get yes! The boy's been with me all day: okay, give me.