An anonymous copyright owner lays claim on Crank Dat ROFLCon! Soulja Boy, you didn’t back down from Ice-T. Don’t let these clowns play you!

On Saturday afternoon, a few ROFLCon attendees had the privilege of learning about the history of dance crazes from Kevin Driscoll, the founding father of Soulja Boy Studies (SBS, pronounced Essbeezy). The slides from his panel, Work it Move it Bang it Bump it, are now up…as is the video of the snaps-on learning the attendees took part in!

To see ROFLCon crank it, click here for the Blip version or here for the crappier Youtube version.

YOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

(Update: For those of you who remain unconvinced about the importance of Crank Dat Soulja Boy, I present: Mike Gravel, candidate for the American presidency)

This week’s obsession: Tay Zonday’s new Dr. Prepper-branded music video. The power of Zonday’s Nice Guy steamrolls the messy bramble patch of cliche that surround him in this latest experiment to join the world of user-generated content with brands that time forgot.

The opening shot begins with a faithful reconstruction of Tay’s groundbreaking home studio but wastes no time in upending audience expectation by zooming back to reveal a fantastical control room complete with female dancers stationed at glowing green terminal displays. In the first of many ill-fitting attempts to graft hip-hop signifiers onto the real American Idol, Tay smiles at the camera and awkwardly reworks Jay-Z, “Allow me to introduce myself…” We later see Tay in a series of unrelated scenarios – king on a throne, international playboy in silk, b-boy with an icy grill, game show contestant, dapper CEO – yet his smile and charm remind the audience that it’s make-believe, all in good fun. Afterall, he reminds us, he is being “paid a hefty hefty fee.”

Through dozens of snooze-inducing vlogs and a parade of occasionally brilliant songs, Tay has constructed a public identity so powerful that it cannot be overtaken by advertising’s expert lighting and music video’s jump-cut editing. Pepper’s attempt to graft a particular racial and sexual identity on the singer fail completely, especially in light of his obvious Martian heritage. Tay is clearly conscious of this struggle and highlights the tension when he raps, “Brought the Thunder / Made It Rain” referencing both Terror Squad’s soy-beef-master Fat Joe and Wal-Mart’s upstart Pepper competitor, Dr. Thunder.

At the song’s climax, gallons of brown fluid are thrown in slow motion across Tay, a crowd of anonymous dancers, and a two-liter bottle of Dr. Pepper. I suspect that the video’s producers are now cringing at the implications of lifting this technique from You Can’t Do That On Television as 2 Girls, 1 Cup fever sweeps the internet.

The video ends by zooming out even further to reveal the world as an image on yet another old terminal display as Tay’s baritone-on-sizzurp echoes in a vacant concrete box, “This internet thing is wild…” Although I can’t unpack the significance of outdated technology in this situation, its placement in an empty room seems a final stab at isolating Tay’s influence; to suggest he were playing to an empty room. Of course, a look at the view count says otherwise. Tay Zonday will never die.

In ROFLCon’s ongoing attempt to secure an entire panel to discuss dance-crazes that have reached prominent memehood online, team member Christina has just published a major work in the field of SouljaBoy studies. The rapper, Soulja Boy, is notable for developing his career almost entirely off of a rich, open, sharing Web 2.0 infrastructure. This is pretty amazingly badass.

Now, if you know anything about the song, there’s a point in the lyrics where he goes:

Soulja Boy up In This OHH
Watch Me Lean And Watch Me Rock
Super Man Dat Hoe

Look and be amazed at Christina’s amazingly diverse collection of Soulja Boy iterations, including an entire series featuring different superheroes and pop culture figures. Go internet! For more about Christina, see the Team Page.

(Edit by Christina: We cannot even mention Soulja Boy studies without pointing to founding father Kevin Driscoll’s presentation on the history of the meme or his CMS compatriot Xiaochang Li’s two amazing articles on the phenomenon and the video itself. Note that Kevin is also on the Team. Coincidence? Nope, we’re just that awesome.)