HAZY, CRAZY SONG OF SUMMER

Newcomer Afroman Gets High On The Charts After Grass-Roots Campaign

It really happened, just as he sings in the song.

Back in January, Joseph ``Afroman'' Foreman, 27, was supposed to
clean his room and do some errands, when a friend came over with a
joint. They smoked it, hung out from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., and didn't get
anything done. Later, when Foreman -- who had already lost his wife
and kids because he couldn't support them -- thought about his wasted
day, a song popped into his head.

That ditty -- ``Because I Got High'' -- has been flooding national
radio airwaves since its July release, on rap and rock stations
alike. The song has shot from 67 to 33 this week on the Billboard
charts. It's this year's ``Thong Song,'' the novelty hit of the
summer.

It will be released Tuesday on Foreman's debut album ``The Good
Times'' (Universal) and is part of the soundtrack of the
just-released movie ``Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.''

``I was gonna clean my room, but then I got high,'' his litany
begins, proving the best writers write what they know. ``I was gonna
get up and find the broom, but then I got high.''

The punch lines continue, with the singer failing to pay child
support, running from the cops, ending up in a wheelchair, messing up
his entire life, ``because I got high.''

There are many hazy, crazy things about the song, not the least of
which is that Afroman could be the first and biggest star created by
the Napster file-swapping network before the courts shut it down.

The free music distribution system -- and a grass-roots campaign that
had him giving away records at a Mississippi gas station -- has
helped launch him to stardom, or at least one-hit-wonderdom.

Two years ago Foreman was working at Los Angeles International
Airport, loading baggage and, yes, getting loaded regularly.

Now, he has cleaned up, has cut the weed and is trying to make up for
lost time so he can launch the music career he's always dreamed of.

Foreman was raised in South-Central Los Angeles, and moved to
suburban Palmdale. His father, Edgar, was a mechanic for
McDonnell-Douglas.

Sagging Pants Statement

He was a ``sag rebel,'' a guy whose pants sagged toward his knees, a
ghetto fashion at mostly white Sage Junior High School. He felt
singled out when got kicked out of school in the eighth grade for
refusing to drop his fashion statement. He wrote his first rap song
then.

``It was a Depeche Mode school. I wasn't a rebel, but I was the one
who didn't go along with the Howdy Doody program. . . . I figured if
she can wear green hair and my man over here can wear spikes and this
dude has ripped jeans, well let me sag, Cuz.''

He transferred to Palmdale High School, left without getting a
diploma, but later ended up at Los Angeles Southwest Community
College, where he got his stage name from a woman in the cafeteria.

``This perfect, perfect hair magazine girl was sitting behind me. I
took my hat off, had a ring around my head. She was rude. You know
how when you are popular, you don't have to be polite. She said,
`Hey, you, boy, what's his name? Afroman?'

``It stuck, and all my friends started calling me that. I was looking
for my MC name. I didn't want nothing like you can tell a dude made
up his own name, like Heavenly Henry, Luscious Larry, Poetic Paul. .
. . I wanted reality to name me. I kept it.''

When he wasn't at the airport, his time in Los Angeles was spent
trying to get other successful rappers to listen to his tapes and
help him get started, a frustrating proposition.

``I was trying to sell tapes to rappers who were trying to sell me
their own tapes.''

Broke, unable to support his wife and children, he moved to
Hattiesburg, Miss., where his father had retired.

And there, he figured, he could find people in need of some
entertainment. He would approach people at a local gas station and
hand them a tape and ask them to listen to it. Then, if they liked
it, he'd hit them up for $10.

One day, a college kid drove by and told him he put his song on
Napster, and all of a sudden, his career began to rocket. ``Man, it
was a wonderful thing. . . . All of a sudden, people knew who I was.
. . . People would come up and say, `You're Afroman. I downloaded
your CD.' I was dirty broke, but I had fame though, man. . . .I
didn't need money; I had people. It was cool.''

The disc started selling, spread by word of mouth and word of
computer. Radio was getting requests. Afroman was playing parties,
then bars, then clubs. And finally, the record label Universal got
word of it and signed Foreman at the end of June. The company got the
song to ``Jay and Silent Bob'' director Kevin Smith and radio shock
jock Howard Stern, who further passed the gospel of blunt.

``It's a real sweat-wiper, like a dude who just finished building a
house,'' says the Afroed singer, who speaks like an urban poet. ``He
may not be turning cartwheels, but he's wiping sweat, taking a sip of
cold water, he's smiling, and like, `yeah.' It's a real deep
satisfaction. The satisfaction I've been trying to get since the
eighth grade.''

The song generated some controversy but has steamrollered through:
MTV, which didn't play it for weeks, now has put it on. Radio
stations report it is the most requested song in ages.

Just the Facts, Man

Foreman says it isn't a song condoning or condemning the use of
marijuana. Like a sex education course, he says, it sketches the
facts and lets the listeners decide for themselves.

The rest of his album, which compares in outrageousness to Luther
Campbell and 2 Live Crew, traffics humorously in songs about sex,
drugs and alcohol. It is bound to be a frat party hit.

Foreman is on the bill for the upcoming Cypress Hill Smoke Out tour
with Busta Rhymes, the Deftones and other artists (tentatively slated
to hit Oakland's Network Associates Coliseum for Oct. 13), but he
won't be sharing in the party.

``If I was a rich dude with nothing to do, I'd get high,'' he says.
``I don't smoke much weed, but the little weed I did smoke, I did at
the wrong time when something major was at stake. I wrote the song to
laugh at the stuff I've been through and to make sure I don't do it
again. Especially when I have a lot at stake.''