S. Samuel
Teen rapper Soulja Boy Tell Em recently talked about how he handles online criticism and said he actually finds inspiration in negative feedback from bloggers.
Referencing Twitter disses, Soulja Boy said he is most confident in his music.
“When I see stuff like that it makes my ego get bigger. Because it’s like, d*mn, all these people are focusing on me–whether it’s good or it’s bad. I know that my music’s the sh*t. It’s only a certain group of people pushing that negative energy, so for all the other people that’s seeing it that f*ck with me, that makes them want to go harder for me. When I see stuff like that, I know it’s going to lead all these people to my name, period. It’s funny, but at the same time, it’s promotion.” (VIBE)
Earlier this year, Rhymefest hit up SOHH about dealing with negative feedback from bloggers.
“If five people think you’re sh*t, then not only will it bring you down a few notches, it will affect the art that you’re trying to create,” Rhymefest told SOHH. “Because it’ll make it so that you’re stuck, so then you can’t create freely because you’re thinking about what those five people said and not even what the fifty people said about how they loved it. And I sat and thought in the studio for four hours, ‘Why does my existence disgust this person, what is it about the way God made me that disgusts another individual?’ It took me four hours to snap out of it to say what the f*ck am I doing? This dude is probably 11 years old, it could be anything. And then what I noticed is a lot of people that write that sh*t, if you give them attention like, ‘So what songs don’t you like?’ dude, these same people be like, ‘Oh my God, he talked to me. I love your sh*t!’ You figure out, all this person wanted was for someone to recognize them. Where I’m with it now, I’m a f*cking star dude. Like, I’m popular — people want to knock you off whatever it is….artists have to keep looking straight.” (SOHH)
Rapper Memphis Bleek recently admitted to using bloggers’ feedback as “fuel” for his writing contnet.
“I’m not a blogger but I definitely do read the blogs,” Bleek said in an interview. “I read the comments. It’s fuel for a guy like me because I love to hear what people gotta say. If you look at it, on a percentage scale, 20% of the s**t is real, and 80% of the s**t is bulls**t but that 20% is what matters. Somebody is gonna comment something real that you can take wit’ you and put into your craft or your daily routine. Somebody gon’ care about you.” (All Hip Hop)
Bleek’s former labelmate, Freeway, also said he takes note of Internet users’ comments.
“When I was doing the whole month of madness — I would read the comments and I would respond to comments on some of the joints people would be saying this and that and I would respond,” Freeway explained in an interview. “But when I first, like, two years ago when I really first started dropping joints on the net, like, people wasn’t f*cking with me. N*ggas was like, ‘Ah, get the f*ck outta here,’ but once I started building up the substance and material and people were seeing that the material was good, slowly but surely they started f*cking with it. The comments used to make me mad but when they be hating, they’re Internet thugs so I ain’t worried about that.” (Vlad TV)
Check out a past Soulja Boy Tell Em interview below:
