Soulja Boy was born DeAndre Ramone Way on July 28, 1990 in Chicago, Illinois. At the age of 6 his family moved to Atlanta, Georgia and Soulja Boy became interested in rap music. At the age of 14, he relocated to Batesville, Mississippi with his father, who provided a recording studio for Soulja Boy to explore his musical ambitions. In November 2005, he posted his songs on the website SoundClick. In March 2007, he recorded "Crank That" and released his first independent album "Unsigned & Still Major: Da Album Before da Album". By the end of May 2007, "Crank That" received its first airplay and Soulja Boy met with Mr. Collipark of Collipark Records to sign a deal with Interscope Records. On July 13, 2007 he released his debut studio album, Souljaboytellem.com. In its first week, Souljaboytellem.com debuted at number 4 on the Billboard 200 with 117,262 copies sold in the first week. To date it has sold over 900,000 copies. Soulja Boy followed up that success with two subsequent albums in 2008 and 2009. These were titled, iSouljaBoyTellem and The DeAndre Way, respectively. In 2008, Soulja Boy was nominated for a Grammy for Best Rap Song for the single Crank That (Soulja Boy).
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