"Soulja Boy"; was Born in Chicago,iLL in 1990.He was raised there by this mother &; grandmother.He said his first rap when he was 5 years old in Shy-town.He and his mother Lisa later moved to Atlanta,Ga. in 1996.Atlanta is where he learned how to do do Beats and dance.The snap music was just coming into play while he was in Atlanta.He mixed his Chicago style flow with his Atlanta beats and then the hits started coming.He was in Atlanta from age 6 to the age of 14.At the age of 14 he moved to Batesville,Ms. with his dad Tracy.Batesville is 40miles south of Memphis,Tn. on I-55.It was there in batesville that he picked up the Memphis style of rap.His dad brought him a in house studio and the rest is history.He started his website www.SouljaBoytellem.com and the rest is internet history.People were feeling his different but cool way of dance and snap music.When people would ask him where he was from he would say ,"Shylantaville or Shylantasippi" he did not want to leave out any of his cities so he would claim them all.Shy comes from Chicago because its called Shy-town and Lanta comes from Atlanta and ville comes from Batesville.The Sippi comes from Mississippi so that he could represent Mississippi.

He linked up with PalmTreePromotions, PalmTreeManaagement, PalmTreeBooking (Miami Mike) and started to doing shows across the country;mostly Sweet 16 parties, Skating Rings, and Private Parties.He has crossed-over to all nationalities already.He started a Myspace site (Myspace.com/Souljaboytellem) so that his fans could get closer to him at the end of July in 2006. He has already broken history on Myspace for an independent artirst.He has over 700,000 profile views,over 2.5millions total plays in just under 4 short months.He averages 15,000 to 30,000 plays a day &; 1,500 to 3,000 downloads a day on the site. The numbers that he is doing is unbeliveable.Its hard for any independent artist to touch him.He's rated #1 on My space out of 30million independent artist.Many Record labels have tried to get him.The Biggest so far is Sony stay tuned to see whats next!

.

James "FLX DERTE" Smith
 
If there is any truth to the age-old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words then the cinematic visions of James Smith (AKA FLX DERTE) are surely worth a billion books. Like the generation of filmmakers that went before him (Spike Lee, Johns Singleton, Ted Demme, et al) FLX DERTE is not afraid to take the maverick approach to cinema. His gritty, urgent approach to telling a story harks back on the days of guerilla film-making. Nowhere is this approach more apparent than in his inaugural film, Dirty States of America, the first documentary that takes and in depth birds-eye view at Southern Hip Hop.
 
Unlike many of today's young filmmakers who would rather do arm chair research, FLX DERTE rented a car and a camera and spend a year and a half traveling throughout the south to find just the right footage. "I drove to every Southern state in the union except Virginia," says FLX DERTE. " Every other state I went there; Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Arkansas and Kentucky. I just drive into town, go find the hood, and start talking to people. I stayed in some states as long as two weeks filming two or three interviews a day; sometimes I'd do five to seven interviews in a day. I wanted people to walk away with a sense of what the South was really like and I knew in order to do that I had to be there."

,