American rapper Soulja Boy proudly shows his love for video games with the cover of his latest mixtape, "Mario & Domo vs. The World.” Unfortunately, the game references don’t really extend into the music outside of (from what I gather) alluding to himself as Mario, of Super Mario Bros. fame, and producer Young L as Domo, a Japanese-television-station mascot.

Actually, this is a good thing. The songs on MXDVTW are pretty hard on the ears, to put it nicely, and since the gamer homages are limited, he's nowhere close to bringing about a new wave of nerd core.

Even though Soulja Boy appears to only superficially associate his new mixtape with Mario, however, he in fact has a notable history of displaying his love for gaming.

Remember when the dude tried to play Braid? Or how about when, back in 2008, he challenged the Internet to try and best him in Gears of War, Call of Duty 4, and Halo 3? OK, so he sounds pretty ignorant in both his music and his vlogs. But checking his Xbox Live Gamerscore shows that he’s racked up over 13,000 points across 300+ games. XBL user Souljaboytellem is definitely not part of the casual crowd.

This mixtape is also not the first one where Soulja Boy abstractly proclaims he’s a gamer on the cover. Last year he put out “1UP,” which was ironically more Naruto themed. At the time, he declared that if he were in a video game, “This mixtape would advance me to the next level with an extra life.” I’m not even sure what that means or how it’s related to his absurd music.

I recommend that if Soulja Boy wants to gain more authentic credibility as a gamer, he should actually rhyme about all the specific titles he plays. But in order to do it right, he should probably put down the 360 controller and, you know, work on his rapping…a lot. As he currently stands, shallowly yet prominently referencing Super Mario Bros. on the cover of his mediocre mixtape, he’s not doing fans of rap or video games any favors.