Soulja Boy: "First Day of School" (via SoundCloud)

Influence is a strange and powerful thing in 2015. As it’s become one of our foremost cultural ideals, it now functions as something of a protective shield against critique. While criticism continues to evolve towards an approach that considers a work’s sociocultural impact alongside its perceived artistry, influence has become inherently valuable in its own right—regardless of what that influence actually entails, more is self-evidently better. So artists of great influence feel increasingly immune to criticism on moral or aesthetic terms; in the same way that clickbait almost always commands the most traffic, being “influential” tends to wield far more power than being “good.” Whether this is democratic or soul-crushing depends on where you’re standing.

One recent example of influence as the ultimate 21st century ideal involved the art world clamoring over Kim Kardashian’s selfie anthology with a fervency that often rang fake-deep. Thing is, there’s no need to paint Kim as an artistic genius to acknowledge her very real cultural contributions. The past decade has seen a slow, begrudging acceptance of Kim as more than a sexual object or harbinger of the death of culture, but instead, as someone who is savvy, self-starting, and able to direct the collective dialogue—someone who just gets it, whatever “it” may be. Uncoincidentally, that shift lines up with the rise of social media and our expanding obsession with DIY networking, branding, and self-actualization.

But back when the Kardashian multimedia empire was barely a blip, Soulja Boy represented this idea of untouchable influence—of virality above all else—more than any other working artist. Fittingly enough, “Keeping Up With the Kardashians”’ first season hit the air in 2007, the same year “Crank That (Soulja Boy)”, the debut single from the 16-year-old born DeAndre Cortez Way, spent seven weeks atop the Hot 100. Kim’s infamous sex tape leaked that year, too, and while people hated her back then, Soulja Boy seemed to incite a particularly intense ire within certain listeners and critics.

Soulja Boy: "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" (via SoundCloud)

“If you’re seeking a circle of hell lower than the one in which ‘Crank That’ is ubiquitous, listen to his entire album,” wrote Entertainment Weekly’s Chris Willman in a list that ranked Soulja’s full-length debut, souljaboytellem.com, as the worst album of 2007. On his Urban Legend mixtape the following year, then-50-year-old “Cop Killer” provocateur turned “Law & Order” stooge Ice-T noted: “Fuck Soulja Boy. Eat a dick. You singlehandedly ruined hip-hop.” He also threatened to punch Soulja in the face.

Soulja’s response, uploaded straight to YouTube, was the first major indication that he was more than some random kid who could turn a thinly-veiled metaphor about ejaculative strategy into a nationwide smash. He landed some well-placed jabs: “You was born before the Internet was created! How the fuck did you even find me?” Then his face grew serious. “Think about it in my shoes. This time last year I was poor as fuck. I was in the ghetto. Nigga, I worked to get this—I’m 17 years old! You should be congratulating me!” It was a watershed moment, an unofficial-but-official changing of the guard. Even Kanye, another guy who leveraged the power of the Internet early on, weighed in on the dust-up on his blog: “He came from the hood, made his own beats, made up a new saying, new sound and a new dance with one song… If that ain’t Hip Hop then what is?”