Music Video: Titus Jones "College is Crazy" (Britney Spears / Beyonce / Jay-Z / Gnarls Barkley / Asher Roth)

I'm a little bit troubled by how much I like this one.

Titus Jones (of "I Wanna Bulletproof Dancer" and "Good Girls Burn Miami") has done a whole album, Culture Shock (available for download at his website), and of the two Culture Shock songs for which there are videos so far, this is my favorite. It's also one of my four favorite tracks on the album overall (the other three being "Oops I Shot Jolene's Mom," "Pokestar," and "We Love Hustling Drugs"). I cannot figure out why I like it, though; Asher Roth, around whom the rest of the mix seems to be constructed, strikes me as being sort of aggressively and pointedly douchey, the sort of person I would go out of my way to avoid, particularly in the bridge. And yet.¹



It might be that I'm liking the way the other songs (esp. the Gnarls Barkley) comment on and partly undercut the Asher Roth. I don't know.

Titus Jones, by the way, will do mixes for hire.² Were I to win the lottery or something, I think one of the first things I would do would be to contact Mr. Jones and buy a 4-5 minute mashup of the following songs:

"Baby" (Justin Bieber)
"Baby Baby" (Amy Grant)
"Baby Baby Baby" (TLC)
"Baby Baby Baby Baby Baby" (R. Kelly)
"Say Baby" (David Garza)³

Might be one of those things that would turn out more clever than good,⁴ but if anybody could spin that mostly-shitty straw into gold, it'd be Titus Jones.

Anyway. When there's a video for "Oops I Shot Jolene's Mom," I'll post about that, too. That'll probably be a shorter post, though.

-

¹ There's also the issue of the word "crazy" being repeated over and over. Mental illness advocates, and some people with mental illness, don't like this kind of thing. The word "crazy," they say, is used to stigmatize, ignore, and demean those with mental illnesses, and using it to mean "more extreme than anticipated" or "uncharacteristic" is somehow likewise demeaning to the mentally ill. I can sort of almost see the point, but I think the logic is flawed: I think watering down a slur by giving it additional meanings is the best possible way to take away the sting. Insisting that people not use the word because it upsets you only gives people more power and incentive to upset you by using it, particularly if the word has become essentially meaningless. (Like for example "fucking:" a "fucking good party" is basically the same as a "crazy good party," and in both cases, the only purpose the words "fucking" and "crazy" serve is to intensify the description and convey an attitude. They're not interchangeable in all situations, though: "You're crazy" is obviously not the same thing as "You're fucking.")
No doubt some could make counterarguments, but that's not even really the point: my point is that although some people would be upset by how many times "crazy" is used in the mashup, I'm not one of those people. I have cut certain words from my vocabulary because of arguments like the above ("lame," "retarded," "bitchy" -- though "totally bitchin' Camaro" is still acceptable), but I'm keeping "crazy." I'm not trying to be an asshole, but it's crazy fucking useful.
² Though they're pricey: the cheapest option is a mashup of three songs to make a new song under two minutes long, and that costs $50.
³ A song which is not on YouTube (except in a really crappy live version) but worth looking for -- I like the whole album Overdub, actually -- and which is primarily about how in order to get played on the radio, one has to write songs that "don't forget to say baby, baby, baby, baby, baby, baby." I heard the song on the radio about nine years ago, so obviously it worked.
⁴ I haven't even heard the R. Kelly song: I'm only using it because it was the only song title I could find with more than three "Baby"s. (Oh. Wait. Now I've heard it. Well, maybe Jones could do something with it anyway.)