Soulja Boy Tell'em Opens Up About Life On New Record,

iSouljaBoyTellem 'That's the deepest I ever got on a song, period,' he says of album track, 'I Pray'.

By Shaheem Reid

One of the biggest knocks that critics have against Soulja Boy Tell'em is that his music has no substance. On part of his second LP, iSouljaBoyTellem, he decided to let the world know a little bit more about his life.

"I got girls claiming I got them pregnant, my life is really hectic," he raps on "I Pray," the album's outro. "I'm going through the spectrum, don't hate it, just respect it." He goes on to talk about a partially damaged relationship with his birth mother and stepmother as well as his detractors, and calls for his friend Gucci Mane to be released from prison.
"'I Pray,' it's the outro of my CD," he explained last week — after his video game battle with MTV News' Stephen Totilo — "That's the deepest I ever got on a song, period, in my career. I was just really speaking on different situations. Me becoming a celebrity, coming from high-school student to being a celebrity and having people hate on you. How my moms feel about the situation. It's mixed emotions all round my family. You got people asking for money, people feeling a certain kind of way now that I'm in the situation I'm in."

Soulja does revisit most of the elements that gained him his young following on his self-titled debut. "Booty Got Swag" is the sequel to his hit "Donk."

"The first 'Donk' record was in-the-club crazy," he said. "That was the song that had all the dudes coming up to me saying, 'I appreciate that, dog.' The women loved it. So I was, like, 'I gotta do a part two for this album.'

"'Rubber Bands," he added, describing another track off the LP, "is basically when I first came into the game, I didn't used to rock all this jewelry. I used to rock rubber bands. Even on the 'Superman' video, I had the rubber-band necklace, the rubber-band bracelet. I did that track over a Drumma Boy beat. He did the 'Pray' record, too. But the 'Rubber Bands,' that's for the old Soulja Boy fans."

Soulja has already released "Bird Walk" and "Turn My Swag On" off the new album. "Kiss Me Thru the Phone" with Sammie is the new single and video.

"Jim Johnson produced that record," said Soulja, who plans to tour in February. "He did 'Lollipop' for Lil Wayne and 'Whatever You Like' for T.I. Basically, it's about when you been in a situation. Say you're at work and your girl was at work. You really wanna see her. You call her, you wanna kiss her. You want to get to her but you can't. You kiss her through the phone."

.: references MTV :.