Rapper Soulja Boy claims Steve Jobs gave him the first iPhone

AppleInsider

Soulja Boy claims he was the first rapper to get the original iPhone, handed to him by Steve Jobs himself while filming a music video.

Soulja Boy says Steve Jobs gave him the first iPhone

According to Soulja Boy, he was filming the music video for the hit "Crank That" in 2007 when the Apple team came. He made the claim during a podcast interview for "Million Dollaz Worth Of Game."

"It was 'Crank That' video shoot 2007," said Soulja Boy. "Steve Jobs and the Apple team came. I was in the swimming pool, doing the instructional dance. Showing the people how to do the dance. They came, they brought me the iPhone."

Soulja Boy says he was the FIRST rapper to get an iPhone in 2007 pic.twitter.com/zdpKPEeGDE

-- Rap All-Stars (@RapAllStars)

July 3, 2021

Cult of Mac checked the claim, and confirmed that Soulja Boy did in fact meet with Apple personnel during the video shoot. However, the video was shot on July 17, approximately two weeks after the iPhone went on sale in the United States.

While this means Soulja Boy may not have been the first rapper with an iPhone, he was among the first, and probably received it from Steve Jobs himself. Apple has been known to collaborate with stars to promote products and has done so repeatedly throughout its history.

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williamh

If the iPhone went on sale two weeks earlier, this person was probably NOT among the first rappers to get an iPhone. Sales were brisk - probably a few hundred thousand sold by then. Like most other successful people, don’t rappers like shiny things?

japhey

So, the CEO of a major corporation had nothing better to do on this day than to visit the pool of an artist who was not a star at the time, but who was shooting the video that would actually make him a star? An artist that had only been signed to a major label for less than 2 months? An artist who, at that time, still only enjoyed a modest, albeit loyal, internet following? An artist who was sooo proud of this important moment in his life that he just couldn’t wait to share it with everybody…14 years later?

Ok, sure. This seems exactly like a real story. Eddy Cue gave me mine, but I lost the photo, damnit. 

edited July 2021

macgui

Uh huh.
Sure. Who knows, maybe Steve did hand his own personal iPhone to him to check it out, or maybe Steve was scoring some dope dope and it was a "Here, hold my tech" moment. In an adrenaline rush Steve may have said "Hey, that's iPhone #0001. GIMME that back! WTF was I thinking??" So it may depend one what the definition of "gave" is. 

slimyyetsatisfying

That's cool. Steve Jobs gave me my first iPhone too! Although, I was sitting down at eating my Taco Bell dinner.

mr lizard

Steve and I invented the iPhone back in 1997, shortly after his return to Apple. We sat down for muffins and a cola, and he had a bag of wires and metal with him. I had a pocket full of microcontrollers. We started goofing around with the components, and after a few hours had a working phone with WiFi, which we couldn't test because WiFi wasn't that popular back then. 

We got as far as agreeing pricing before Steve had a sudden change of heart. "The world's not ready for this" he said, or something similar, so we didn't release it.

Imagine how peeved I was to see Jobs on stage in 2007 pulling the same damn phone out of his pocket that I built with him back in that muffin café. 

I sent him a few text messages asking him what the hell he was playing at, but he didn't respond. I heard rumours shortly after that he was busy following the announcement visiting barely known rappers on their music video sets, dishing out free phones. Whatever. By that point I was over it.