September 2007

Kanye West released his third studio album Graduation on the same day as 50 Cent's Curtis in a highly publicized commercial competition. Graduation sold 957,000 copies in its first week to 50 Cent's 691,000, and its stadium-scale electronic sound shifted the direction of mainstream hip-hop.

Seventeen-year-old Georgia rapper Soulja Boy released Crank That, which spent seven weeks at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Promoted through YouTube and MySpace, it was one of the first viral songs in digital music history, foreshadowing social media's dominance over music promotion.