WHO WOULD OF THOUGHT 5 YEARS AGO THAT SOULJA BOY WOULD BE THE GO TO GUY FOR BEATS?

Soulja Boy Tell'em has jumped from behind the knobs into the forefront as a performer — he just released three mixtapes on Halloween: Cortez, Paranormal Activity and DatPiff. But don't forget, the young G still knows how to make beats. One of Soulja's biggest fans, Kanye West, recently had the Southern millionaire in the lab working for him.
"Me as a producer, I think I've grown tremendously," Soulja told us recently in L.A. "I've been in the studio with Kanye. I did three tracks for him back-to-back."
Soulja says the sessions were give and take.

"Me working with him, collaborating different beats," he explained. "Him showing me a lot of stuff I didn't know. Me showing him a lot of stuff he didn't know. He had an ear for my sound. Of course I had an ear for all the stuff he did. Genius! You know what I mean?

"The process with Kanye — he'll come in and it depends on what it is," Soulja continued. "If I'm making the beat from scratch, I'll just work. If he's got a sample ... It was three different samples that we was working on. On one of them, he was like, 'I want this to go here, I want you to do this.' I like when an artist pushes me how he was pushing me. He doesn't go easy on me. I make it and be like, 'Here.' Nah, I had to go over it several times. It can be frustrating too. At the same time, sitting there trying to make a beat for the person that's right in front of you, it can be a lot of pressure, but it's all fun. At the end of the day, we're making hit music."

Soulja is also cranking out tracks for his next LP, The DeAndre Way.

Next Wave of Flav

On Jamie Foxx: "I was in the studio with him a couple of days ago working on a new beat for him. All the artists that reached out to me for beats — like Rihanna — my portfolio is only getting longer and longer."

On Rihanna: "With this particular project [it was] like, 'Whoa!' because [her rep was] like, 'Yo, I need you to do something for Rihanna's album. You got 11 hours. Go!' It was like, 'What? I'm all out of pocket.' How do you make something that's gonna be a #1 hit so fast? But it's been done before because I made 'Crank That' in 30 minutes."

Five-Star Stellar Hits

» "Crank That"
» V.I.C. - "Get Silly"
» Bow Wow - "Marco Polo"
» "Gucci Bandana"
» "Donk"
» "Yahhh!"