Asher Roth: "I Love College"

As of press time, I’m still waiting for Asher Roth to dramatically reveal that he is, in fact, Jamie Kennedy, once again making fun of horribly misguided affluent suburbanites trying their hands at hip-hop.

There’s still the possibility, though, that Asher Roth is a real person, hoping to be taken seriously. If that’s the case, and he’s really been this successful already, then the world has gone crazy, black is white, up is down, and tomorrow I’ll start saying “no” when I mean “yes.” It’s hard to recall a more crushingly, universally awful track than “I Love College.” Let’s look at some lyrics, delivered in whimsically grating faux-Ebonics:

“I can’t tell you what I learned from school / but I could tell you a story or two / um, yeah of course I learned some rules / like don’t pass out with your shoes on / and don’t leave the house till the booze gone / and don’t have sex if she’s too gone”

It only gets worse when the chorus sings, “that party last night / was awfully crazy / I wish we taped it / I danced my ass off / and had this one girl completely naked.” This shit makes the Lyte Funky Ones look like Rakim. Roth also has a song about Obama, but somehow I can’t picture him bringing up politics for reasons other than sliming into a girl’s pants after she’s four tequilas in. Basically, Roth is the dreaded that guy from the school, whose life revolved around living life like it was Animal House, celebrating a ridiculous sense of entitlement to arrested adolescence and general douchebaggery. It’s only a matter of time before the concept album about frat pledging.

As for the beat, it’s a sample of Weezer’s “Say It Ain’t So.” Supposedly, we should appreciate this as a sign that Roth is being authentic to his origins, and not trying to Vanilla Ice things up, but just because he admits to being raised on a diet of Dave Matthews doesn’t make him any less excruciating than Kevin Federline. Shit, at least K-Fed was funny—Roth settles for boring. The fact that Roth talks like your average co-ed and then raps like he desperately wants to be Eminem (probably true) doesn’t help, either.

Ever since the latest Animal Collective album became a hype storm, it’s become popular to already start declaring superlatives for 2009. I’ll do one better and go ahead and name “I Love College” the worst song of this decade, beating out strong contenders like Spoon’s “The Way We Get By” and Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl.” I’ll ask it one more time—are you sure that’s not you in there, Jamie? Please?