DeAndre Cortez Way, American rapper, known as Soulja Boy Tell 'Em, was born on July 28, 1990 in Chicago, Illinois. His debut single "Crank That" reached 1st position on the Billboard Hot 100 in September 2007. When producing hisalbum Souljaboytellem.com he used just the demo version of FL Studio.

When Way was six years old, he moved to Atlanta, Georgia, and developed a love for rap music along with his partner Young Kwon,with whom he learned how to make repetitive beats and recorded himself saying the same thing over and over and introduced him to snap beats, according to Way.

In November 2005 Soulja Boy, alongside another rapper "Arab" uploads his songs on the unsigned artists community SoundClick. Getting positive reviews on SoundClick, Soulja Boy creates a profile on YouTube on January 13, 2006 with a phrase "... people can put your face to the things you spitting." After that Soulja increases his fan base with the help of MySpace.On April 11th a "Soulja Boy" dance was filmed in a low budget music video. In May 2007 "Crank That" received its first air play and Soulja Boy met with Mr. Collipark to sign a deal with Interscope Records.August 12, 2007, the song won the HBO series Entourage on the Emmy-award and on 1 September it has reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100.Soulja Boy, like many other southern rap artists got criticised for his musical style.

The main criticism was that his lyrics are low in quality and have no real meaning.As Nobodysmiling.com said, "Think of Soulja Boy as sort of a Lil Jon for mentally disabled teenagers and pre-teens, that means don't expect to hear much in the way of metaphors and narratives, just crunk-ass music."But Soulja Boy said that the potential listeners of music don't want any lyrical complexity and high content in his songs - "People don't want to go to a club and hear about people getting shot or hear about your life story," he says.