Earlier this month, Atlanta rapper and general stain on hip-hop Soulja Boy tweeted that he had just signed a deal worth $400 million. It was not confirmed with whom the deal was signed, or what the details of the deal were – just that he thought he had been “low balled.”
$400 million deal confirmed. I still they think they low balled me though. I was thinking 2 or 3 billion..
— Soulja Boy (@souljaboy) May 1, 2016
All 12 of Soulja Boy’s fans were wondering about what the deal might mean, and who it might be signed with. Was it with a record company? Does it mean there’s a new record coming? Please just tell us, Soulja Boy!
It has now been confirmed that the deal was signed with an online poker consortium, World Poker Fund Holdings; the publicly traded company behind CelebrityWorld.com. The company confirmed in a statement on Friday (20th May) that the deal was indeed with them, and that Soulja Boy was “one of most influential urban entertainers and artist on social media today.” Haaaaa!
Ok, so maybe I’m being a little unfair to Soulja Boy. He does have a fairly large Twitter following (verging on 4.86 million), and the statement from World Poker Fund Holdings states that he has a total social media following of 15 million (the rest of that figure is made up from Facebook, although we’re not sure how many of those likes are ironic or not). The statement says that the deal was signed to enable Soulja Boy to promote the company’s gaming assets, apparently soon to include an “in-flight gaming” platform. And besides, he now has a $400 million deal that I don’t.
But come on! Soulja Boy?! Why are people still giving him money? I thought we, as a collective zeitgeist, were done with this guy. I thought he was out of our minds about the time that an un-ironic use of “swag” left our lexicons. Apparently there are people in the business community that see Soulja Boy as an icon of sound financial practice, which I find hilarious. A publicist from World Poker, Matthew Bird, actually said: “Soulja Boy represents the best of the best and we are already seeing the impact from his presence.”
I like to think that it’s someone in high management who came up with this idea. Some person who’s slaving away at their desk in their immaculate suit, who has a deep passion for supermanning hoes and cranking that Robocop. But there’s probably nothing that glorious in play here, more likely his name was brought up by a computer algorithm, scanning through people just likely to accept a deal like this. #BUSINESS
Image: Just Richest