I cleaned up because I got high

CATHRIN SCHAER reports on the funny-smelling song that is shaping up to be the biggest single of the year.

No matter what you think of Afroman's No 1 single Because I Got High, the guy himself is actually quite funny.

"I keep thinking I'll wake up in prison and that this is a movie or something," Joseph Foreman (aka Afroman) said of his astonishment at his single's success.

A wannabe rapper from Los Angeles, the 27-year-old moved to Mississippi to be near his father after releasing just one album that got lost amid gun-toting gangsta rappers and genuine hip-hoppers.

"You got the gangsters and the pimps telling their stories but what about the regular dude nobody likes? I can rap and not kill anybody," Foreman says of his style, adding: "Back in those days, a rapper playing a guitar was like a nun wearing a bikini. You just didn't do it."

Nonetheless, down in the deep south while working as an airport baggage handler, he earned a small but enthusiastic following of fans who were hugely impressed by one particular song - you guessed it - Because I Got High.

"I made that song in my garage," explains Foreman, who used to smoke a lot but doesn't any more because he says he is too busy (banking his cheques, no doubt). "I just thought only my friends would play and appreciate it."

One major record label deal later and inclusion of the song on indie director Kevin Smith's new stoner comedy Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back, and next thing you know listeners are calling radio stations all over the US making it one of the most-requested singles in recent times and buying it by the crateload.

It's almost the same here - except Afroman is feeling the love from New Zealand more than any other country.

While the radio airplay charts put him at only number 35 this week, radio station staff say it's been a heavily requested track. And New Zealand has the dubious honour of being the first country in the world to put Afroman at No 1 in the singles charts. Last week it also went platinum.

So what does it say about our nation's psyche when a novelty track like this becomes one of the biggest-selling singles of the year? Afroman is now officially bigger than Bob the Builder and British pop stars Hear'say.

Does everyone here smoke marijuana? Does a whole nation have the sense of humour of a 13-year-old boy? Or is it just that we like sing-a-long, pseudo-reggae songs to play at our parties? The lyrics are not exactly intellectually challenging; even the biggest lush could cope.

Afroman's local label manager, Janine Russell, thinks it could be the reggae connection. "It's not exactly lyrically challenging, but it seems to have struck a chord - I mean, a lot of people think they're related to Uncle Bob [Marley] round here," she says.

"I think it's that teenage rebellion thing," suggests Michael Coolvear, who looks after the singles at Marbeck's Records in Auckland and who notes that most buyers of Afroman are aged between 12 and 18, with hardly anyone above 22 purchasing. While Coolvear doesn't think any of these customers look much like hardened dope fiends, he believes Afroman's comic image appeals to adolescents.

Interestingly, despite its focus on marijuana drugs, which last time we looked was still illegal, there hasn't really been any controversy about Afroman.

As Christian Boston, operations manager at the ZM network, says: "If you listen to the words, it's actually an anti-drug song."

No angry, far-right religious groups picketing the record stores and radio stations then? "No, nothing at all," says Russell. "One of the television shows was a little unsure about playing it but we gave them our 'cleanest' version [there are several versions, some include more sexual references] and then they were forced to play it anyway because so many kids were requesting it."

Meanwhile, radio has been in the same position. "We only play it as a request," says one mainstream programmer who prefers to remain anonymous, "and we edited it by about two minutes - not so much because of the swearing but because it's so boring."